RICTI  ON 


-\GNES  REPPLIER 


POINTS  OF  FRICTION 


POINTS  OF  FRICTION 


BY 

AGNES  REPPLIER,  Lirr.D. 

AUTHOR  OF  "BOOKS  AND  MEN,"  "ESSAYS  IN 
IDLENESS,"  "COUNTER-CURRENTS,"  ETC.,  ETC. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

rerfjtf  Cambrib0e 
1920 


CO1' V  RIGHT,    19%),    BY   AGNES   RKl'l'LlER 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


Note 

Six  of  the  ten  essays  in  this  volume  — 
"Living  in  History,"  "Dead  Authors," 
"Consolations  of  the  Conservative,"  "The 
Cheerful  Clan,"  "Woman  Enthroned," 
and  "Money"  —  are  reprinted  through  the 
courtesy  of  The  Atlantic  Monthly;  "The  Be 
loved  Sinner"  and  "The  Strayed  Prohibi 
tionist"  through  the  courtesy  of  The  Cen 
tury  Magazine;  "Cruelty  and  Humour'" 
through  the  courtesy  of  The  Yale  Review; 
"The  Virtuous  Victorian"  through  the 
courtesy  of  The  Nation. 


438 


C©ntents 

Living  in  History  I 

Dead  Authors  31 

Consolations  of  the  Conservative  70 

The  Cheerful  Clan  105 

The  Beloved  Sinner  126 

The  Virtuous  Victorian  149 

Woman  Enthroned  167 

The  Strayed  Prohibitionist  204 

Money  227 

Cruelty  and  Humour  254 


POINTS  OF  FRICTION 


Living  in  History 

WHEN  Mr.  Bagehot  spoke  his  lu 
minous  words  about  "a  fatigued 
way  of  looking  at  great  subjects,"  he 
gave  us  the  key  to  a  mental  attitude 
which  perhaps  is  not  the  modern  thing 
it  seems.  There  were,  no  doubt,  Greeks 
and  Romans  in  plenty  to  whom  the 
"glory"  and  the  "grandeur"  of  Greece 
and  Rome  were  less  exhilarating  than 
they  were  to  Edgar  Poe,  —  Greeks  and 
Romans  who  were  spiritually  palsied 
by  the  great  emotions  which  presum 
ably  accompany  great  events.  They 
may  have  been  philosophers,  or  humani 
tarians,  or  academists.  They  may  have 
been  conscientious  objectors,  or  con 
scienceless  shirkers,  or  perhaps  plain 
I 


•Points  of  Friction 

men  and  women  with  a  natural  gift  of 
indecision,  a  natural  taste  for  compro 
mise  and  awaiting  developments.  In  the 
absence  of  newspapers  and  pamphlets, 
these  peaceful  pagans  were  compelled  to 
express  their  sense  of  fatigue  to  their 
neighbours  at  the  games  or  in  the 
market-place ;  and  their  neighbours  —  if 
well  chosen — sighed  with  them  over  the 
intensity  of  life,  the  formidable  happen 
ings  of  history. 

Since  August,  1914,  the  turmoil  and 
anguish  incidental  to  the  world's  great 
est  war  have  accentuated  every  human 
type, —  heroic,  base,  keen,  and  evasive. 
The  strain  of  five  years'  fighting  was 
borne  with  astounding  fortitude,  and 
Allied  statesmen  and  publicists  saw  to 
it  that  the  clear  outline  of  events  should 
not  be  blurred  by  ignorance  or  misrepre 
sentation.  If  history  in  the  making  be  a 
fluid  thing,  it  swiftly  crystallizes.  Men, 
"living  between  two  eternities,  and 
warring  against  oblivion,"  make  their 

2 


Living  in  History 

indelible  record  on  its  pages;  and  other 
men  receive  these  pages  as  their  best 
inheritance,  their  avenue  to  understand 
ing,  their  key  to  life. 

Therefore  it  is  unwise  to  gibe  at  his 
tory  because  we  do  not  chance  to  know 
it.  It  pleases  us  to  gibe  at  anything  we 
do  not  know,  but  the  process  is  not  en 
lightening.  In  the  second  year  of  the 
war,  the  English  "Nation"  commented 
approvingly  on  the  words  of  an  English 
novelist  who  strove  to  make  clear  that 
the  only  things  which  count  for  any  of 
us,  individually  or  collectively,  are  the 
unrecorded  minutiae  of  our  lives.  "His 
tory,"  said  this  purveyor  of  fiction,  "is 
concerned  with  the  rather  absurd  and 
theatrical  doings  of  a  few  people,  which, 
after  all,  have  never  altered  the  fact 
that  we  do  all  of  us  live  on  from  day  to 
day,  and  only  want  to  be  let  alone." 

"These  words,"  observed  the  "Na 
tion"  heavily,  "have  a  singular  truth 
and  force  at  the  present  time.  The  peo- 
3 


Points  of  Friction 

pie  of  Europe  want  to  go  on  living,  not 
to  be  destroyed.  To  live  is  to  pursue  the 
activities  proper  to  one's  nature,  to  be 
unhindered  and  unthwarted  in  their 
exercise.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
the  life  of  Europe  is  something  which 
has  persisted  in  spite  of  the  history  of 
Europe.  There  is  nothing  happy  or 
fruitful  anywhere  but  witnesses  to  the 
triumph  of  life  over  history." 

Presuming  that  we  are  able  to  dis 
entangle  life  from  history,  to  sever  the 
inseverable,  is  this  a  true  statement,  or 
merely  the  expression  of  mental  and 
spiritual  fatigue?  Were  the  great  his 
toric  episodes  invariably  fruitless,  and 
had  they  no  bearing  upon  the  lives  of 
ordinary  men  and  women?  The  battles 
of  Marathon  and  Thermopylae,  the 
signing  of  the  Magna  Charta,  the  Triple 
Alliance,  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence,  the  birth  of  the  National  Assem 
bly,  the  first  Reform  Bill,  the  recogni 
tion  in  Turin  of  the  United  Kingdom  of 
4 


Living  in  History 

Italy,  —  these  things  may  have  been 
theatrical,  inasmuch  as  they  were  cer 
tainly  dramatic,  but  absurd  is  not  a 
wise  word  to  apply  to  them.  Neither  is 
it  possible  to  believe  that  the  life  of 
Europe  went  on  in  spite  of  these  historic 
incidents,  triumphing  over  them  as  over 
so  many  obstacles  to  activity. 

When  the  "Nation"  contrasts  the 
beneficent  companies  of  strolling  play 
ers  who  "represented  and  interpreted 
the  world  of  life,  the  one  thing  which 
matters  and  remains,"  with  the  com 
panies  of  soldiers  who  merely  destroyed 
life  at  its  roots,  we  cannot  but  feel  that 
this  editorial  point  of  view  has  its  lim 
itations.  The  strolling  players  of  Eliza 
beth's  day  afforded  many  a  merry  hour; 
but  Elizabeth's  soldiers  and  sailors  did 
their  part  in  making  possible  this  mirth. 
The  strolling  players  who  came  to  the 
old  Southwark  Theatre  in  Philadelphia 
interpreted  "the  world  of  life,"  as  they 
understood  it ;  but  the  soldiers  who  froze 
5 


Points  of  Friction 

at  Valley  Forge  offered  a  different  inter 
pretation,  and  one  which  had  consider 
ably  more  stamina.  The  magnifying  of 
small  things,  the  belittling  of  great  ones, 
indicate  a  mental  exhaustion  which 
would  be  more  pardonable  if  it  were  less 
complacent.  There  are  always  men  and 
women  who  prefer  the  triumph  of  evil, 
which  is  a  thing  they  can  forget,  to  pro 
longed  resistance,  which  shatters  their 
nerves.  But  the  desire  to  escape  an  obli 
gation,  while  very  human,  is  not  gener 
ally  thought  to  be  humanity's  noblest 
lesson. 

Many  smart  things  have  been  written 
to  discredit  history.  Mr.  Arnold  called 
it  "the  vast  Mississippi  of  falsehood," 
which  was  easily  said,  and  has  been  said 
in  a  number  of  ways  since  the  days  of 
Herodotus,  who  amply  illustrated  the 
splendours  of  unreality.  Mr.  Edward 
Fitzgerald  was  wont  to  sigh  that  only 
lying  histories  are  readable,  and  this 
point  of  view  has  many  secret  adher- 
6 


Living  in  History 

ents.  Mr.  Henry  Adams,  who  taught 
history  for  seven  years  at  Harvard,  and 
who  built  his  intellectual  dwelling-place 
upon  its  firm  foundations,  pronounced 
it  to  be  "  in  essence  incoherent  and  im 
moral."  Nevertheless,  all  that  we  know 
of  man's  unending  efforts  to  adjust  and 
readjust  himself  to  the  world  about  him 
we  learn  from  history,  and  the  tale  is 
an  enlightening  one.  "  Events  are  won 
derful  things,"  said  Lord  Beaconsfield. 
Nothing,  for  example,  can  blot  out,  or 
obscure,  the  event  of  the  French  Revo 
lution.  We  are  free  to  discuss  it  until 
the  end  of  time ;  but  we  can  never  alter 
it,  and  never  get  away  from  its  conse 
quences. 

The  lively  contempt  for  history  ex 
pressed  by  readers  who  would  escape 
its  weight,  and  the  neglect  of  history 
practised  by  educators  who  would  es 
cape  its  authority,  stand  responsible  for 
much  mental  confusion.  American  boys 
and  girls  go  to  school  six,  eight,  or  ten 
7 


Points  of  Friction 

years,  as  the  case  may  be,  and  emerge 
with  a  misunderstanding  of  their  own 
country,  and  a  comprehensive  igno 
rance  of  all  others.  They  say,  "I  don't 
know  any  history,"  as  casually  and  as 
unconcernedly  as  they  might  say,  "I 
don't  know  any  chemistry,"  or  "  I  don't 
know  metaphysics."  A  smiling  young 
freshman  in  the  most  scholarly  of  wom 
en's  colleges  told  me  that  she  had  been 
conditioned  because  she  knew  nothing 
about  the  Reformation. 

"You  mean, — "  I  began  question- 
ingly. 

"I  mean  just  what  I  say,"  she  inter 
rupted.  "  I  did  n't  know  what  it  was,  or 
where  it  was,  or  who  had  anything  to  do 
with  it." 

I  said  I  did  n't  wonder  she  had  come 
to  grief.  The  Reformation  was  some 
thing  of  an  episode.  And  I  asked  myself 
wistfully  how  it  happened  she  had  ever 
managed  to  escape  it.  When  I  was  a 
little  schoolgirl,  a  pious  Roman  Catholic 
8 


Living  in  History 

child  with  a  distaste  for  polemics,  it 
seemed  to  me  I  was  never  done  studying 
about  the  Reformation.  If  I  escaped 
briefly  from  Wycliffe  and  Cranmer  and 
Knox,  it  was  only  to  be  met  by  Luther 
and  Calvin  and  Huss.  Everywhere  the 
great  struggle  confronted  me,  every 
where  I  was  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  inexorable  logic  of  events.  That 
more  advanced  and  more  intelligent 
students  find  pleasure  in  every  phase  of 
ecclesiastical  strife  is  proved  by  Lord 
Broughton's  pleasant  story  about  a 
member  of  Parliament  named  Joliffe, 
who  was  sitting  in  his  club,  reading 
Hume's  "  History  of  England,"  a  book 
which  well  deserves  to  be  called  dry. 
Charles  Fox,  glancing  over  his  shoulder, 
observed,  "I  see  you  have  come  to  the 
imprisonment  of  the  seven  bishops"; 
whereupon  Joliffe,  like  a  man  engrossed 
in  a  thrilling  detective  story,  cried  des 
perately,  "For  God's  sake,  Fox,  don't 
tell  me  what  is  coming!" 
9 


Points  of  Friction 

This  was  reading  for  human  delight, 
for  the  interest  and  agitation  which  are 
inseparable  from  every  human  docu 
ment.  Mr.  Henry  James  once  told  me 
that  the  only  reading  of  which  he  never 
tired  was  history.  "The  least  significant 
footnote  of  history,"  he  said,  "stirs  me 
more  than  the  most  thrilling  and  pas 
sionate  fiction.  Nothing  that  has  ever 
happened  to  the  world  finds  me  indiffer 
ent."  I  used  to  think  that  ignorance  of 
history  meant  only  a  lack  of  cultivation 
and  a  loss  of  pleasure.  Now  I  am  sure 
that  such  ignorance  impairs  our  judg 
ment  by  impairing  our  understanding', 
by  depriving  us  of  standards,  of  the 
power  to  contrast,  and  the  right  to  esti 
mate.  We  can  know  nothing  of  any  na 
tion  unless  we  know  its  history ;  and  we 
can  know  nothing  of  the  history  of  any 
nation  unless  we  know  something  of  the 
history  of  all  nations.  The  book  of  the 
world  is  full  of  knowledge  we  need  to 
acquire,  of  lessons  we  need  to  learn,  of 
10 


Living  in  History 

wisdom  we  need  to  assimilate.  Consider 
only  this  brief  sentence  of  Polybius, 
quoted  by  Plutarch:  "In  Carthage  no 
one  is  blamed,  however  he  may  have 
gained  his  wealth."  A  pleasant  place,  no 
doubt,  for  business  enterprise;  a  place 
where  young  men  were  taught  how  to 
get  on,  and  extravagance  kept  pace  with 
shrewd  finance.  A  self-satisfied,  self- 
confident,  money-getting,  money-loving 
people,  honouring  success,  and  hugging 
their  fancied  security,  while  in  far-off 
Rome  Cato  pronounced  their  doom. 

There  are  readers  who  can  tolerate 
and  even  enjoy  history,  provided  it  is 
shorn  of  its  high  lights  and  heavy  shad 
ows,  its  heroic  elements  and  strong  im 
pelling  motives.  They  turn  with  relief 
to  such  calm  commentators  as  Sir  John 
Seeley,  for  years  professor  of  modern 
history  at  Cambridge,  who  shrank  as 
sensitively  as  an  eighteenth-century 
divine  from  that  fell  word  "enthusi 
asm,"  and  from  all  the  agitation  it 
II 


Points  of  Friction 

gathers  in  its  wake.  He  was  a  firm  up 
holder  of  the  British  Empire,  hating 
compromise  and  guiltless  of  pacifism; 
but,  having  a  natural  gift  for  aridity, 
he  saw  no  reason  why  the  world  should 
not  be  content  to  know  things  without 
feeling  them,  should  not  keep  its  eyes 
turned  to  legal  institutions,  its  mind 
fixed  upon  political  economy  and  inter 
national  law.  The  force  that  lay  back 
of  Parliament  annoyed  him  by  the  sim 
ple  primitive  way  in  which  it  beat 
drums,  fired  guns,  and  died  to  uphold 
the  institutions  which  he  prized;  also 
because  by  doing  these  things  it  evoked 
in  others  certain  simple  and  primitive 
sensations  which  he  strove  always  to 
keep  at  bay.  "We  are  rather  disposed 
to  laugh,"  he  said,  "when  poets  and 
orators  try  to  conjure  us  with  the  name 
of  England."  Had  he  lived  a  few  years 
longer,  he  would  have  known  that  Eng 
land's  salvation  lies  in  the  fact  that  her 
name  is,  to  her  sons,  a  thing  to  con- 
12 


Living  in  History 

jure  by.  We  may  not  wisely  ignore  the 
value  of  emotions,  nor  underestimate 
the  power  of  the  human  impulses  which 
charge  the  souls  of  men. 

The  long  years  of  neutrality  engen 
dered  in  the  minds  of  Americans  a  nat 
ural  but  ignoble  weariness.  The  war  was 
not  our  war,  yet  there  was  no  escaping 
from  it.  By  day  and  night  it  haunted  us, 
a  ghost  that  would  not  be  laid.  Over  and 
over  again  we  were  told  that  it  was  not 
possible  to  place  the  burden  of  blame  on 
any  nation's  shoulders.  Once  at  least 
we  were  told  that  the  causes  and  objects 
of  the  contest,  the  obscure  fountains 
from  which  had  burst  this  stupendous 
and  desolating  flood,  were  no  concern 
of  ours.  But  this  proffered  release  from 
serious  thinking  brought  us  scant  peace 
of  mind.  Every  honest  man  and  woman 
knew  that  we  had  no  intellectual  right 
to  be  ignorant  when  information  lay  at 
our  hand,  and  no  spiritual  right  to  be 
unconcerned  when  great  moral  issues 
13 
I 


Points  of  Friction 

were  at  stake.  We  could  not  in  either 
case  evade  the  duty  we  owed  to  reason. 
The  Vatican  Library  would  not  hold  the 
books  that  have  been  written  about  the 
war;  but  the  famous  five-foot  shelf 
would  be  too  roomy  for  the  evidence  in 
the  case,  the  documents  which  are  the 
foundation  of  knowledge.  They,  at  least, 
are  neither  too  profuse  for  our  patience, 
nor  too  complex  for  our  understanding. 
"The  inquiry  into  the  truth  or  falsehood 
of  a  matter  of  history,"  said  Huxley, 
"is  just  as  much  an  affair  of  pure  science 
as  is  the  inquiry  into  the  truth  or  false 
hood  of  a  matter  of  geology;  and  the 
value  of  the  evidence  in  the  two  cases 
must  be  tested  in  the  same  way." 

The  resentment  of  American  pacifists, 
who,  being  more  human  than  they 
thought  themselves,  were  no  better  able 
than  the  rest  of  us  to  forget  the  state  of 
Europe,  found  expression  in  petulant 
complaints.  They  kept  reminding  us  at 
inopportune  moments  that  war  is  not 
14 


Living  in  History 

the  important  and  heroic  thing  it  is  as 
sumed  to  be.  They  asked  that,  if  it  is  to 
figure  in  history  at  all  (which  seems,  on 
the  whole,  inevitable),  the  truth  should 
be  told,  and  its  brutalities,  as  well  as  its 
heroisms,  exposed.  They  professed  a 
languid  amusement  at  the  "rainbow  of 
official  documents"  which  proved  every 
nation  in  the  right.  They  inveighed  bit 
terly  against  the  " false  patriotism" 
taught  by  American  schoolbooks,  with 
their  absurd  emphasis  on  the  "embat 
tled  farmers"  of  the  Revolution,  and 
the  volunteers  of  the  Civil  War.  They 
assured  us,  in  and  out  of  season,  that  a 
doctor  who  came  to  his  death  looking 
after  poor  patients  in  an  epidemic  was 
as  much  of  a  hero  as  any  soldier  whose 
grave  is  yearly  decorated  with  flowers. 
All  this  was  the  clearest  possible  expo 
sition  of  the  lassitude  induced  in  faint 
hearted  men  by  the  pressure  of  great 
events.  It  was  the  wail  of  people  who 
wanted,  as  the  "Nation"  feelingly  ex- 
15 


Points  of  Friction 

pressed  it,  to  be  let  alone,  and  who  could 
not  shut  themselves  away  from  the 
world's  great  tragedy.  None  of  us  are 
prepared  to  say  that  a  doctor  and  a 
nurse  who  perform  their  perilous  duties 
in  an  epidemic  are  not  as  heroic  as  a 
doctor  and  a  nurse  who  perform  their 
perilous  duties  in  war.  There  is  glory 
enough  to  go  around.  Only  he  that  lov- 
eth  his  life  shall  lose  it.  But  to  put  a 
flower  on  a  soldier's  grave  is  a  not  too 
exuberant  recognition  of  his  service,  for 
he,  too,  in  his  humble  way  made  the 
great  sacrifice. 

As  for  the  brutalities  of  war,  who  can 
charge  that  history  smooths  them  over? 
Certain  horrors  may  be  withheld  from 
children,  whose  privilege  it  is  to  be 
spared  the  knowledge  of  uttermost  de 
pravity;  but  to  the  adult  no  such  mercy 
is  shown.  Motley,  for  example,  describes 
cruelties  committed  three  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago  in  the  Netherlands,which 
equal,  if  they  do  not  surpass,  the  cruel- 
16 


Living  in  History 

ties  committed  six  years  ago  in  Bel 
gium.  Men  heard  such  tales  more  calmly 
then  than  now,  and  seldom  sought  the 
coward's  refuge  —  incredulity.  The 
Dutch,  like  other  nations,  did  better 
things  than  fight.  They  painted  glorious 
pictures,  they  bred  great  statesmen  and 
good  doctors.  They  traded  with  extraor 
dinary  success.  They  raised  the  most 
beautiful  tulips  in  the  world.  But  to  do 
these  things  peacefully  and  efficiently, 
they  had  been  compelled  to  struggle  for 
their  national  existence.  The  East  India 
trade  and  the  freedom  of  the  seas  did 
not  drop  into  their  laps.  And  because 
their  security,  and  the  comeliness  of 
life  which  they  so  highly  prized,  had 
been  bought  by  stubborn  resistance  to 
tyranny,  they  added  to  material  well- 
being  the  "luxury  of  self-respect." 

To  overestimate  the  part  played  by 

war  in  a  nation's  development  is  as 

crude  as  to  ignore  its  alternate  menace 

and  support.  It  is  with  the  help  of  his- 

17 


Points  of  Friction 

tory  that  we  balance  our  mental  ac 
counts.  Voltaire  was  disposed  to  think 
that  battles  and  treaties  were  matters 
of  small  moment;  and  Mr.  John  Rich 
ard  Green  pleaded,  not  unreasonably, 
that  more  space  should  be  given  in  our 
chronicles  to  the  missionary,  the  poet, 
the  painter,  the  merchant,  and  the 
philosopher.  They  are  not,  and  they 
never  have  been,  excluded  from  any 
narrative  comprehensive  enough  to  ad 
mit  them ;  but  the  scope  of  their  author 
ity  is  not  always  sufficiently  defined. 
Man,  as  the  representative  of  his  age, 
and  the  events  in  which  he  plays  his 
vigorous  part,  —  these  are  the  warp  and 
woof  of  history.  We  can  no  more  leave 
John  Wesley  or  Ignatius  Loyola  out  of 
the  canvas  than  we  can  leave  out  Marl- 
borough  or  Pitt.  We  know  now  that  the 
philosophy  of  Nietzsche  is  one  writh 
Bernhardi's  militarism. 

As  for  the  merchant, —  Froissart  was 
as  well  aware  of  his  prestige  as  was  Mr. 
18 


Living  in  History 

Green.  " Trade,  my  lord/*  said  Dinde 
Desponde,  the  great  Lombard  banker, 
to  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  "finds  its 
way  everywhere,  and  rules  the  world." 
As  for  commercial  honour,  —  a  thing  as 
fine  as  the'honour  of  the  aristocrat  or  of 
the  soldier,  —  what  can  be  better  for 
England  than  to  know  that  after  the 
great  fire  of  1666  not  a  single  London 
shopkeeper  evaded  his  liabilities;  and 
that  this  fact  was  long  the  boast  of  a  city 
proud  of  its  shopkeeping?  As  for  juris 
prudence,  —  Sully  was  infinitely  more 
concerned  with  it  than  he  was  with  com 
bat  or  controversy.  It  is  with  stern  satis 
faction  that  he  recounts  the  statutes 
passed  in  his  day  for  the  punishment  of 
fraudulent  bankrupts,  whom  we  treat 
so  leniently;  for  the  annulment  of  their 
gifts  and  assignments,  which  we  guard 
so  zealously;  and  for  the  conviction  of 
those  to  whom  such  property  had  been 
assigned.  It  was  almost  as  dangerous  to 
steal  on  a  large  scale  as  on  a  small  one 
19 


Points  of  Friction 

under  the  levelling  laws  of  Henry  of 
Navarre. 

In  this  vast  and  varied  chronicle,  war 
plays  its  appointed  part.  "We  cannot," 
says  Walter  Savage  Landor,  "push 
valiant  men  out  of  history."  We  cannot 
escape  from  the  truths  interpreted,  and 
the  conditions  established  by  their  val 
our.  What  has  been  slightingly  called 
the  "  drum-and- trumpet  narrative" 
holds  its  own  with  the  records  of  art  and 
science.  "It  cost  Europe  a  thousand 
years  of  barbarism,"  said  Macaulay, 
"to  escape  the  fate  of  China." 

The  endless  endeavour  of  states  to 
control  their  own  destinies,  the  ebb  and 
flow  of  the  sea  of  combat,  the  "recur 
rent  liturgy  of  war,"  enabled  the  old 
historians  to  perceive  with  amazing  dis 
tinctness  the  traits  of  nations,  etched  as 
sharply  then  as  now  on  the  imperishable 
pages  of  history.  We  read  Froissart  for 
human  delight  rather  than  for  solid  in 
formation;  yet  Froissart's  observations 
20 


Living  in  History 

—  the  observations  of  a  keen-eyed  stu 
dent  of  the  world  —  are  worth  recording 
five  hundred  years  after  he  set  them 
down. 

"In  England,"  he  says,  "strangers 
are  well  received";  yet  are  the  English 
"affable  to  no  other  nation  than  their 
own."  Ireland,  he  holds  to  have  had 
"too  many  kings" ;  and  the  Scotch,  like 
the  English,  "are  excellent  men-at- 
arms,  nor  is  there  any  check  to  their 
courage  as  long  as  their  weapons  en 
dure."  France  is  the  pride  of  his  heart, 
as  it  is  the  pride  of  the  world's  heart  to 
day.  "  In  France  also  is  found  good  chiv 
alry,  strong  of  spirit,  and  in  great  abun 
dance;  for  the  kingdom  of  France  has 
never  been  brought  so  low  as  to  lack 
men  ready  for  the  combat."  Even  Ger 
many  does  not  escape  his  regard.  "The 
Germans  are  a  people  without  pity  and 
without  honour."  And  again:  "The 
Germans  are  a  rude,  unmannered  race, 
but  active  and  expert  where  their  own 
21 


Points  of  Friction 

personal  advantage  is  concerned."  If 
history  be  "philosophy  teaching  by  ex 
ample,"  we  are  wise  to  admit  the  old 
historians  into  our  counsels. 

To  withhold  from  a  child  some  knowl 
edge  —  apportioned  to  his  understand 
ing  —  of  the  world's  sorrows  and  wrongs 
is  to  cheat  him  of  his  kinship  with  hu 
manity.  We  would  not,  if  we  could, 
bruise  his  soul  as  our  souls  are  bruised ; 
but  we  would  save  him  from  a  callous 
content  which  is  alien  to  his  immatu 
rity.  The  little  American,  like  the  little 
Austrian  and  the  little  Serb,  is  a  son  of 
the  sorrowing  earth.  His  security  —  of 
which  no  man  can  forecast  the  future  — 
is  a  legacy  bequeathed  him  by  predeces 
sors  who  bought  it  with  sweat  and  with 
blood;  and  with  sweat  and  with  blood 
his  descendants  may  be  called  on  to 
guard  it.  Alone  among  educators,  Mr. 
G.  Stanley  Hall  finds  neutrality,  a  "high 
and  ideal  neutrality,"  to  be  an  attribute 
of  youth.  He  was  so  gratified  by  this 
22 


Living  in  History 

discovery  during  the  years  of  the  war, 
so  sure  that  American  boys  and  girls 
followed  ''impartially"  the  great  strug 
gle  in  Europe,  and  that  this  judicial  atti 
tude  would,  in  the  years  to  come,  enable 
them  to  pronounce  "the  true  verdict  of 
history,"  that  he  "thrilled  and  tingled" 
with  patriotic  —  if  premature  —  pride. 

"The  true  verdict  of  history"  will  be 
pronounced  according  to  the  documen 
tary  evidence  in  the  case.  There  is  no 
need  to  vex  our  souls  over  the  possible 
extinction  of  this  evidence,  for  closer 
observers  than  our  impartial  young 
Americans  are  placing  it  permanently 
on  record.  But  I  doubt  if  the  equanim 
ity  which  escapes  the  ordeal  of  partisan 
ship  is  to  be  found  in  the  mind  of  youth, 
or  in  the  heart  of  a  child.  Can  we  not  re 
member  a  time  when  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses  were  not  —  to  us  —  a  matter  for 
neutrality?  Our  little  school  histories, 
those  vivacious,  anecdotal  histories, 
banished  long  ago  by  rigorous  educators, 
23 


Points  of  Friction 

were  in  some  measure  responsible  for 
our  Lancastrian  fervour.  They  fed  it 
with  stories  of  high  courage  and  the  sor 
rows  of  princes.  We  wasted  our  sympa 
thies  on  "a  mere  struggle  for  power"; 
but  Hume's  laconic  verdict  is  not,  and 
never  can  be,  the  measure  of  a  child's 
solicitude.  The  lost  cause  fills  him  with 
pity,  the  cause  which  is  saved  by  man's 
heroic  sacrifice  fires  him  to  generous  ap 
plause.  The  round  world  and  the  tale  of 
those  who  have  lived  upon  it  are  his 
legitimate  inheritance. 

Mr.  Bagehot  said,  and  said  wisely 
after  his  wont,  that  if  you  catch  an  in 
telligent,  uneducated  man  of  thirty,  and 
tell  him  about  the  battle  of  Marathon, 
he  will  calculate  the  chances,  and  esti 
mate  the  results;  but  he  will  not  really 
care.  You  cannot  make  the  word  "Mar 
athon"  sound  in  his  ears  as  it  sounded 
in  the  ears  of  Byron,  to  whom  it  had 
been  sacred  in  boyhood.  You  cannot 
make  the  word  "freedom"  sound  in  un- 
24 


Living  in  History 

tutored  ears  as  it  sounds  in  the  ears 
of  men  who  have  counted  the  cost  by 
which  it  has  been  preserved  through  the 
centuries.  Unless  children  are  permitted 
to  know  the  utmost  peril  which  has 
threatened,  and  which  threatens,  the 
freedom  of  nations,  how  can  they  con 
ceive  of  its  value?  And  what  is  the  worth 
of  teaching  which  does  not  rate  the  gift 
of  freedom  above  all  earthly  benefac 
tions?  How  can  justice  live  save  by  the 
will  of  freemen?  Of  what  avail  are  civic 
virtues  that  are  not  the  virtues  of  the 
free?  Pericles  bade  the  Athenians  to 
bear  reverently  in  mind  the  Greeks  who 
had  died  for  Greece.  "Make  these  men 
your  examples,  and  be  well  assured  that 
happiness  comes  by  freedom,  and  free 
dom  by  stoutness  of  heart."  Perhaps  if 
American  boys  bear  reverently  in  mind 
the  men  who  died  for  America,  it  will 
help  them  too  to  be  stout  of  heart,  and 
"worthy  patriots,  dear  to  God." 

In  the  remote  years  of  my  childhood, 
25 


Points  of  Friction 

the  study  of  current  events,  that  most 
interesting  and  valuable  form  of  tuition, 
which,  nevertheless,  is  unintelligible 
without  some  knowledge  of  the  past, 
was  left  out  of  our  limited  curriculum. 
We  seldom  read  the  newspapers  (which 
I  remember  as  of  an  appalling  dulness), 
and  we  knew  little  of  what  was  happen 
ing  in  our  day.  But  we  did  study  his 
tory,  and  we  knew  something  of  what 
had  happened  in  other  days  than  ours; 
we  knew  and  deeply  cared.  Therefore 
we  reacted  with  fair  intelligence  and  no 
lack  of  fervour  when  circumstances  were 
forced  upon  our  vision.  It  was  not  pos 
sible  for  a  child  who  had  lived  in  spirit 
with  Saint  Genevieve  to  be  indifferent 
to  the  siege  of  Paris  in  1870.  It  is  not 
possible  for  a  child  who  has  lived  in 
spirit  with  Jeanne  d'Arc  to  be  indiffer 
ent  to  the  destruction  of  Rheims  Cathe 
dral  in  1914.  If  we  were  often  left  in 
ignorance,  we  were  never  despoiled  of 
childhood's  generous  ardour.  Nobody 
26 


Living  in  History 

told  us  that  "courage  is  a  sublime  form 
of  hypocrisy."  Nobody  fed  our  young 
minds  on  stale  paradoxes,  or  taught  us 
to  discount  the  foolish  impulsiveness  of 
adults.  Our  parents,  as  Mr.  Henry  James 
rejoicingly  observes,  "had  no  desire  to 
see  us  inoculated  with  importunate  vir 
tues."  The  Honourable  Bertrand  Rus 
sell  had  not  then  proposed  that  all 
teaching  of  history  shall  be  submit 
ted  to  an  "international  commission," 
"which  shall  produce  neutral  text 
books,  free  from  patriotic  bias."  There 
was  something  profoundly  fearless  in 
our  approach  to  life,  in  the  exposure  of 
our  unarmoured  souls  to  the  assaults  of 
enthusiasms  and  regrets. 

The  cynic  who  is  impatient  of  primi 
tive  emotions,  the  sentimentalist  whose 
sympathy  is  confined  exclusively  to  his 
country's  enemies,  grow  more  shrill- 
voiced  as  the  exhaustion  of  Europe  be 
comes  increasingly  apparent.  They  were 
always  to  be  heard  by  those  who  paused 
27 


Points  of  Friction 

amid  the  thunderings  of  war  to  listen  to 
them;  but  their  words  were  lost  in  the 
whirlwind.  It  was  possible  for  a  writer 
in  the  "Survey"  to  allude  brutally  in 
the  spring  of  1916  to  the  "cockpit  of 
Verdun."  It  was  possible  for  Mr.  Rus 
sell  to  turn  from  the  contemplation  of 
Ypres,  and  say:  "The  war  is  trivial  for 
all  its  vastness.  No  great  human  pur 
pose  is  involved  on  either  side,  no  great 
principle  is  at  stake."  If  the  spiritual 
fatigue  of  the  looker-on  had  found  an 
echo  in  the  souls  of  those  who  were 
bearing  the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day, 
the  world  would  have  sunk  to  destruc 
tion.  "The  moral  triumph  of  Belgium," 
said  Cardinal  Mercier,  when  his  coun 
try  had  been  conquered  and  despoiled, 
"is  an  ever  memorable  fact  for  history 
and  civilization."  Who  shall  be  the 
spokesman  of  the  future? 

In  the  last  melancholy  pages  of  that 
able  and  melancholy  book,  "The  Eco 
nomic  Consequences  of  the  Peace,"  Mr. 
28 


Living  in  History 

Keynes  describes  the  apathy  of  victori 
ous  England,  too  spent  to  savour  vic 
tory.  "Our  power  of  feeling  or  caring 
beyond  the  immediate  questions  of  our 
own  material  well-being  is  temporarily 
eclipsed.  We  have  been  moved  already 
beyond  endurance,  and  need  rest.  Never, 
in  the  lifetime  of  men  now  living,  has 
the  universal  element  in  the  soul  of  man 
burnt  so  dimly." 

Never  perhaps  in  the  centuries,  for 
when  in  the  centuries  has  that  element 
been  so  ruthlessly  consumed?  England 
is  like  a  swimmer  who  has  carried  the 
lifeline  to  shore,  battling  amid  the 
breakers,  tossed  high  on  their  crests, 
hurled  into  their  green  depths,  pounded, 
battered,  blinded,  until  he  lies,  a  broken 
thing,  on  the  shore.  The  crew  is  safe,  but 
until  the  breath  comes  back  to  his  la 
bouring  lungs,  he  is  past  all  acute  con 
sideration  for  its  welfare.  Were  Mr. 
Keynes  generous  enough  to  extend  his 
sympathy  alike  to  foes  and  friends,  he 
29 


Points  of  Friction 

might  even  now  see  light  shining  on  the 
horizon.  It  would  do  him  —  it  would  do 
us  all  —  good  to  meditate  closely  on  the 
probable  state  of  Europe  had  Germany 
triumphed.  The  "hidden  currents"  of 
which  we  are  warned  may  be  sweep 
ing  us  on  a  reef ;  but  the  most  imminent 
and  most  appalling  calamity  has  been 
averted.  "Events  are  wonderful  things," 
and  we  may  yet  come  to  believe  with 
Froissart,  lover  of  brave  deeds  and  hon 
ourable  men,  that  "the  most  profitable 
thing  in  the  world  for  the  institution  of 
human  life  is  history." 


Dead  Authors 

LES  morts  n'6crivent  point,"  said 
Madame  de  Maintenon,  who  lived 
in  a  day  of  tranquil  finalities.  If  men's 
passions  and  vanities  were  admittedly 
strong  until  the  hour  of  dissolution,  the 
finger  of  death  obliterated  all  traces  of 
them;  and  the  supreme  dignity  of  this 
obliteration  sustained  noble  minds  and 
solaced  the  souls  that  believed.  An  age 
which  produced  the  Omisons  Funebres 
had  an  unquenchable  reverence  for  the 
grave. 

Echoes  of  Madame  de  Maintenon's 
soothing  conviction  ring  pleasantly 
through  the  intervening  centuries.  Book- 
making,  which  she  knew  only  in  its  smil 
ing  infancy,  had  grown  to  ominous  pro 
portions  when  the  Hon.  Augustine  Bir- 
rell,  brooding  over  the  fatality  which 
had  dipped  the  world  in  ink,  comforted 
31 


Points  of  Friction 

himself  —  and  us  —  with  the  vision  of 
an  authorless  future.  "There  were  no 
books  in  Eden,"  he  said  meditatively, 
"and  there  will  be  none  in  Heaven;  but 
between  times  it  is  otherwise." 

For  an  Englishman  more  or  less  con 
versant  with  ghosts,  Mr.  Birrell  showed 
little  foreknowledge  of  their  dawning 
ambitions.  If  we  may  judge  by  the  re 
cent  and  determined  intrusion  of  spirits 
into  authorship,  Heaven  bids  fair  to  be 
stacked  with  printing-presses.- One  of 
their  number,  indeed,  the  "Living  Dead 
Man,"  whose  amanuensis  is  Elsa  Bar 
ker,  and  whose  publishers  have  unhesi 
tatingly  revealed  (or,  I  might  perhaps 
say,  announced)  his  identity,  gives  high 
praise  to  a  ghostly  library,  well  cata 
logued,  and  containing  millions  of  books 
and  records.  Miss  Lilian  Whiting  assures 
us  that  every  piece  of  work  done  in  life 
has  its  ethereal  counterpart.  "The 
artist  creates  in  the  astral  before  he  cre 
ates  in  the  material,  and  the  creation  in 
32 


Dead  Authors 

the  astral  is  the  permanent  embodi 
ment."  Consequently,  when  an  author 
dies,  he  finds  awaiting  him  an  ' '  imper 
ishable  record"  of  all  he  has  ever  writ 
ten.  Miss  Whiting  does  not  tell  us  how 
she  comes  to  know  this.  Neither  does 
she  say  how  good  a  book  has  to  be  to 
live  forever  in  the  astral,  or  if  a  very  bad 
book  is  never  suffered  to  die  a  natural  and 
kindly  death  as  in  our  natural  and  kindly 
world.  Perhaps  it  is  the  ease  with  which 
astral  immortality  is  achieved,  or  rather 
the  impossibility  of  escaping  it,  which 
prompts  ambitious  and  exclusive  spirits 
to  force  an  entrance  into  our  congested 
literary  life,  and  compete  with  mortal 
scribblers  who  ask  their  little  day. 

The  suddenness  of  the  attack,  and  its 
unprecedented  character,  daunt  and  be 
wilder  us.  It  is  true  that  the  apparitions 
that  lend  vivacity  to  the  ordinary  spirit 
ualistic  seance  have  from  time  to  time 
written  short  themes,  or  dropped  into 
friendly  verse.  Readers  of  that  engaging 
33 


Points  of  Friction 

volume,  "Report  of  the  Seybert  Com 
mission  for  Investigating  Modern  Spirit 
ualism,"  published  in  1887,  will  remem 
ber  that  "Belle,"  who  claimed  to  be  the 
original  proprietor  of  Yorick's  skull 
(long  a  "property  "  of  the  Walnut  Street 
Theatre,  Philadelphia,  but  at  that  time 
in  the  library  of  Dr.  Horace  Howard 
Furness),  voiced  her  pretensions,  and 
told  her  story,  in  ten  carefully  rhymed 
stanzas. 

"  My  form  was  sold  to  doctors  three, 
So  you  have  all  that's  left  of  me; 
I  come  to  greet  you  in  white  mull, 
You  that  prizes  my  lonely  skull." 

But  these  effusions  were  desultory  and 
amateurish.  They  were  designed  as  per 
sonal  communications,  and  were  be 
trayed  into  publicity  by  their  recipients. 
We  cannot  regard  their  authors  —  pains 
taking  but  simple-hearted  ghosts  —  as 
advance  guards  of  the  army  of  occupa 
tion  which  is  now  storming  the  citadel 
of  print. 

34 


Dead  Authors 

It  is  passing  strange  that  the  dead  who 
seek  to  communicate  with  the  living 
should  cling  so  closely  to  the  alphabet 
as  a  connecting  link.  Dying  is  a  primi 
tive  thing.  Men  died,  and  were  wept  and 
forgotten,  for  many,  many  ages  before 
Cadmus  sowed  the  dragon's  teeth.  But 
letters  are  artificial  and  complicated. 
They  belong  to  fettered  humanity 
which  is  perpetually  devising  ways  and 
means.  Shelley,  whose  impatient  soul 
fretted  against  barriers,  cried  out  de 
spairingly  that  inspiration  wanes  when 
composition  begins.  We  strive  to  follow 
Madame  de  Sevigne's  counsel,  "Laissez 
trotter  la  plume";  but  we  know  well 
how  the  little  instrument  halts  and 
stumbles ;  and  if  a  pen  is  too  clumsy  for 
the  transmission  of  thought,  what  must 
be  the  effort  to  pick  out  letters  on 
a  ouija  board,  or.with  a  tilting  table? 
The  spirit  that  invented  table-rapping 
(which  combines  every  possible  dis 
advantage  as  a  means  of  communication 
35 


Points  of  Friction 

with  every  absurdity  that  can  offend  a 
fastidious  taste)  deserves  to  be  penal 
ized  by  its  fellow  spirits.  Even  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge  admits  that  the  substitution  of 
tables  for  pen  and  ink  "has  difficulties 
of  its  own." 

Yet  nothing  can  overcome  the  infatu 
ation  of  ghostly  visitors  for  this  particu 
lar  piece  of  furniture.  They  cannot  keep 
their  spectral  fingers  off  one,  and  they 
will  come  any  distance,  and  take  any 
pains,  for  the  pleasure  of  such  handling. 
Maeterlinck  relates  with  enviable  grav 
ity  the  details  of  an  evening  call  paid 
by  a  monk  who  had  lain  in  the  cloisters 
of  the  Abbaye  de  Saint  Wandrille  since 
1693,  and  who  broke  a  sleep  of  two  cen 
turies  that  he  might  spin  a  table  on  one 
leg  for  the  diversion  of  the  poet's  guests. 
Their  host,  while  profoundly  indifferent 
to  the  entertainment,  accepted  it  with  a 
tolerant  shrug.  If  it  amused  both  mor 
tals  and  the  monk,  why  cavil  at  its  in 
fantile  simplicity? 

36 


Dead  Authors 

The  frolicsome  moods  of  the  Lodge 
table  must  have  been  disconcerting 
even  to  such  a  receptive  and  sympa 
thetic  circle.  It  performed  little  tricks 
like  lying  down,  or  holding  two  feet  in 
the  air,  apparently  for  its  own  innocent 
delight.  It  emulated  /Esop's  affection 
ate  ass,  and  "seemed  to  wish  to  get  into 
Lady  Lodge's  lap,  and  made  caressing 
movements  to  and  fro,  as  if  it  could  not 
get  close  enough  to  her."  It  jocularly 
thumped  piano-players  on  the  back; 
and  when  a  cushion  was  held  up  to  pro 
tect  them,  it  banged  a  hole  in  the  cover. 
What  wonder  that  several  tables  were 
broken  "  during  the  more  exuberant 
period  of  these  domestic  sittings,  before 
the  power  was  under  control " ;  and  that 
the  family  was  compelled  to  provide  a 
strong  and  heavy  article  which  could 
stand  the  "skylarking"  (Sir  Oliver's 
word)  of  supernatural  visitors. 

The  ouija  board,  though  an  improve 
ment  on  the  table,  is  mechanical  and 
37 


Points  of  Friction 

cumbersome.  It  has  long  been  the 
chosen  medium  of  that  most  prolific  of 
spirit  writers,  Patience  Worth;  and  a 
sympathetic  disciple  once  ventured  to 
ask  her  if  there  were  no  less  laborious 
method  by  which  she  could  compose  her 
stories.  To  which  Patience,  who  then 
used  a  language  called  by  her  editor 
"archaic,"  and  who  preferred  to  "dock 
the  smaller  parts-o'-speech,"  replied 
formidably,  — 

"The  hand  o'  her  do  I  to  put  be  the 
hand  o'  her,  and  't  is  ascribe  that  set- 
teth  the  one  awither  by  eyes-fulls  she 
taketh  in." 

The  disciple's  mind  being  thus  set  at 
rest,  he  inquired  how  Patience  discov 
ered  this  avenue  of  approach,  and  was 
told,  - 

'  *  I  did  to  seek  at  crannies  for  to  put ;  ay, 
an't  wer  the  her  o'  her  who  tireth  past 
the  her  o'  her,  and  slippeth  to  a  naught 
of  putting;  and  't  wer  the  me  o'  me  at 
seek,  aye,  and  find.  Aye,  and  't  wer  so." 
38 


Dead  Authors 

The  casual  and  inexpert  reader  is  not 
always  sure  what  Patience  means  to 
say;  but  to  the  initiated  her  cryptic  and 
monosyllabic  speech  offers  no  difficul 
ties.  When  asked  if  she  were  acquainted 
with  the  spirit  of  the  late  Dr.  William 
James,  she  said  darkly,  — 

"  I  telled  a  one  o'  the  brothers  and  the 
neighbours  o'  thy  day,  and  he  doth 
know." 

"This,"  comments  Mr.  Yost,  "was 
considered  as  an  affirmative  reply,"  and 
with  it  her  questioners  were  content. 

All  fields  of  literature  are  open  to  Pa 
tience  Worth,  and  she  disports  herself 
by  turns  in  prose  and  verse,  fiction  and 
philosophy.  Other  spirits  have  their 
specialties.  They  write,  as  a  rule,  letters, 
sermons,  didactic  essays,  vers  libre,  and 
an  occasional  story.  But  Patience  writes 
six-act  dramas  which,  we  are  assured, 
could,  "with  a  little  alteration,"  be 
produced  upon  the  stage,  short  come 
dies  "rich  in  humour,"  country  tales, 
39 


Points  of  Friction 

mystical  tales,  parables,  aphorisms, 
volumes  of  verse,  and  historical  novels. 
In  three  years  and  a  half  she  dictated 
to  Mrs.  Curran,  her  patient  ouija-board 
amanuensis,  900,000  words.  It  is  my 
belief  that  she  represents  a  spirit  syn 
dicate,  and  lends  her  name  to  a  large 
coterie  of  literary  wraiths.  The  most 
discouraging  feature  of  her  performance 
is  the  possibility  of  its  indefinite  ex 
tension.  She  is  what  Mr.  ^?ost  calls  "a 
continuing  phenomenon."  Being  dead 
already,  she  cannot  die,  and  the  benefi 
cent  limit  which  is  set  to  mortal  endeav 
our  does  not  exist  for  her.  "The  larger 
literature  is  to  come,"  says  Mr.  Yost 
ominously;  and  we  fear  he  speaks  the 
truth.  t 

Now  what  do  we  gain  by  this  lament 
able  intrusion  of  ghostly  aspirants  into 
the  serried  ranks  of  authorship?  What  is 
the  value  of  their  work,  and  what  is  its 
ethical  significance?  Perhaps  because 
literary  distinction  is  a  rare  quality,  the 
40 


Dead  Authors 

editors  and  publishers  of  these  revela 
tions  lay  stress  upon  the  spiritual  in 
sight,  the  finer  wisdom,  which  may 
accrue  to  us  from  direct  contact  with 
liberated  souls.  They  even  hint  at  some 
great  moral  law  which  may  be  thus  re 
vealed  for  our  betterment.  But  the  law 
of  Christ  is  as  pure  and  lofty  as  any 
code  our  human  intelligence  can  grasp. 
We  do  not  live  by  it,  because  it  makes 
no  concession  to  the  sickly  qualities 
which  cement  our  earthly  natures;  but 
we  hold  fast  to  it  as  an  incomparable 
ideal.  It  is  not  law  or  light  we  need.  It 
is  the  power  of  effort  and  resistance. 
"Toutes  les  bonnes  maximes  sont  dans 
le  monde ;  on  ne  manque  que  de  les  ap- 
pliquer." 

The  didacticism  of  spirit  authors  is,  so 
far,  their  most  striking  characteristic. 
As  Mr.  Henry  James  would  put  it,  they 
are  "awkward  writers,  but  yearning 
moralists."  Free  from  any  shadow  of 
diffidence,  they  proffer  a  deal  of  counsel, 
41 


Points  of  Friction 

but  it  is  mostly  of  the  kind  which  our 
next-door  neighbour  has  at  our  com 
mand. 

In  the  volume  called  "Letters  from 
Harry  and  Helen,"  the  dead  children 
exhort  their  relatives  continuously ;  and 
their  exhortations,  albeit  of  a  some 
what  intimate  character,  have  been 
passed  on  to  the  public  as  "an  inspira 
tion  to  the  life  of  brotherhood."  Helen, 
for  example,  bids  her  mother  and  sister 
give  away  the  clothes  they  do  not  need. 
"You  had  better  send  the  pink  dress  to 
B.  You  won't  wear  it.  Lace  and  a  few 
good  bits  of  jewelry  you  can  use,  and 
these  won't  hurt  your  progress."  She 
also  warns  them  not  to  take  long  motor 
rides  with  large  parties.  The  car  holds 
four  comfortably;  but  if  her  sister  will 
go  all  afternoon  with  five  people  packed 
into  it,  she  is  sure  to  be  ill.  This  is  sensi 
ble  advice,  but  can  it  be  needful  that 
the  dead  should  revisit  earth  to  give  it? 

Harry,  a  hardy  and  boisterous  spirit, 
42 


Dead  Authors 

with  a  fine  contempt  for  precautions, 
favours  a  motor  trip  across  the  conti 
nent,  gallantly  assures  his  family  that 
the  project  is  "perfectly  feasible,"  tells 
his  sister  to  "shoot  some  genuine  food" 
at  her  sick  husband,  who  appears  to 
have  been  kept  on  a  low  diet,  and  ob 
serves  with  pleasure  that  his  mother  is 
overcoming  her  aversion  to  tobacco. 
"Mamma  is  learning,"  he  comments 
patronizingly.  "Some  day  she  will  arrive 
at  the  point  where  a  smoker  will  fail  to 
arouse  a  spark  of  criticism,  or  even  of 
interest.  When  that  day  comes,  she  will 
have  learned  what  she  is  living  for  this 
time." 

Here  was  a  chance  for  a  ghostly  son  to 
get  even  with  the  parent  who  had  dis 
paraged  the  harmless  pleasures  of  his 
youth.  Harry  is  not  the  kind  of  a  spirit 
to  miss  such  an  opportunity.  He  finds 
a  great  deal  to  correct  in  his  family,  a 
great  deal  to  blame  in  the  world,  and 
some  things  to  criticize  in  the  universe. 
43 


Points  of  Friction 

"  I  suppose  the  Creator  knows  his  own 
business  best,"  he  observes  grudgingly; 
"but  there  have  been  moments  when 
I  felt  I  could  suggest  improvements. 
For  instance,  had  I  been  running  affairs, 
I  should  have  been  a  little  more  open 
about  this  reincarnation  plan  of  elevat 
ing  the  individual.  Why  let  a  soul  bog 
gle  along  blindly  for  numberless  lives, 
when  just  a  friendly  tip  would  have 
illuminated  the  whole  situation,  and 
enabled  him  to  plan  with  far  less 
waste?" 

"O  eloquent,  just  and  mighty  death !" 
Have  we  professed  to  break  thy  bar 
riers,  to  force  thy  pregnant  silence  into 
speech,  only  to  make  of  thy  majesty  a 
vulgar  farce,  and,  of  thy  consolations, 
folly  and  self -righteousness? 

The  "Living  Dead  Man"  has  also  a 
course  of  instruction,  in  fact  several 
courses  of  instruction,  to  offer.  His 
counsels  are  all  of  the  simplest.  He  bids 
us  drink  plenty  of  water,  because  water 
44 


Dead  Authors 

feeds  our  astral  bodies ;  to  take  plenty  of 
sleep,  because  sleep  fits  us  for  work;  and 
on  no  account  to  lose  our  tempers.  He  is 
a  gentle,  garrulous  ghost,  and  his  first 
volume  is  filled  with  little  anecdotes 
about  his  new  —  and  very  dull  —  sur 
roundings,  and  mild  little  stories  of  ad 
venture.  He  calls  himself  an  "astral 
Scheherazade,"  but  no  sultan  would 
ever  have  listened  to  him  for  a  thousand 
and  one  nights.  He  chants  vers  libre  of  a 
singularly  uninspired  order,  and  is  par 
ticular  about  his  quotations.  "  If  you 
print  these  letters,"  he  tells  his  medium, 
"  I  wish  you  would  insert  here  fragments 
from  that  wonderful  poem  of  Words 
worth,  'Intimations  of  Immortality 
from  Recollections  of  Early  Child 
hood.*"  Then  follow  nineteen  lines  of 
this  fairly  familiar  masterpiece.  There 
is  something  rather  droll  in  having  our 
own  printed  poets  quoted  to  us  length 
ily  by  cultivated  and  appreciative  spir 
its. 

45 


Points  of  Friction 

The  "War  Letters"  dictated  by  the 
"Living  Dead  Man"  in  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1915  are  more  animated  and 
highly  coloured.  Some  long-past  epi 
sodes,  notably  the  entrance  of  the  Ger 
man  soldiers  into  Brussels,  are  well  de 
scribed,  though  not  so  vividly  as  by  the 
living  Richard  Harding  Davis.  We  are 
told  in  the  preface  that  on  the  fourth 
of  February,  1915,  the  spirit  wrote: 
"When  I  come  back"  (he  was  touring 
to  a  distant  star),  "and  tell  you  the 
story  of  this  war,  as  seen  from  the  other 
side,  you  will  know  more  than  all  the 
Chancelleries  of  the  nations."  This 
promises  well ;  but  in  the  three  hundred 
pages  that  follow  there  is  not  one  word 
to  indicate  that  the  "Living  Dead 
Man"  had  any  acquaintance  with  real 
happenings  which  were  not  published 
in  our  newspapers ;  or  that  he  was  aware 
of  these  happenings  before  the  news 
papers  published  them.  He  is  always  on 
the  safe  side  of  prophecy.  In  a  letter  die- 


Dead  Authors 

tated  on  the  seventh  of  May,  the  date  of 
the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  he  makes  no 
mention  of  the  crime ;  but  the  following 
morning,  after  the  ghastly  news  was 
known  to  the  world,  he  writes  that  he 
could  have  told  it  twenty-four  hours 
earlier  had  he  not  feared  to  shock  Mrs. 
Barker's  sensibilities. 

It  was  a  mistaken  kindness.  Nothing 
could  save  mankind  from  a  knowledge 
of  that  terrible  deed;  but  four  words 
spoken  on  the  seventh  of  May  would 
have  revolutionized  the  world  of 
thought.  They  would  have  compelled 
belief  in  phenomena  which  we  are  now 
intellectually  free  to  reject. 

The  events  narrated  by  the  "Living 
Dead  Man"  are  of  a  kind  which  the 
Chancelleries  of  the  nations  had  no 
need  to  know.  He  tells  us  that  he  and 
twenty  other  spirits  stood  for  hours  in 
the  palace  of  Potsdam,  trying  with  la 
mentable  lack  of  success  to  reduce  by 
the  pressure  of  their  will  the  greater 
47 


Points  of  Friction 

pressure  of  the  war-will  surging  through 
the  German  nation.  He  has  a  dramatic 
meeting  with  the  spirit  of  the  murdered 
Archduke,  Franz  Ferdinand,  and  a  long 
interview  with  the  spirit  of  Nietzsche, 
whom  he  commands  —  authoritatively 
—  to  go  back  to  earth  and  teach  humil 
ity.  He  rests  and  refreshes  the  jaded 
spirit  of  a  British  officer,  killed  in  ac 
tion,  by  showing  him  a  dance  of  sylphs; 
and  he  meets  an  old  acquaintance,  the 
sylph  Meriline  (friend  and  familiar  of 
a  French  magician),  doing  scout  duty 
in  the  German  trenches.  Finally  he 
assures  us  that  Serbia  is  doomed  to  dis 
aster,  because  a  Serbian  magician,  who 
died  many  years  ago,  left  her  as  a  legacy 
a  host  of  "astral  monsters"  that  infest 
the  land,  awakening  from  slumber  at  the 
first  hint  of  strife,  and  revelling  in 
bloodshed  and  misery. 

It  is  hard  lines  on  Serbia,  and  it 
sounds  a  good  deal  like  the  fairy  tales  of 
our  happy  infancy.  The  "Living  Dead 


Dead  Authors 

Man"  is  careful  to  let  us  know  that  he 
has  assisted  at  the  war  councils  of  Ber 
lin,  being  enabled  by  an  especial  hard 
ening  of  the  astral  ears  to  hear  all  that 
is  spoken  on  earth.  No  secrets  of  state 
are  hidden  from  him;  but,  on  such 
weighty  matters,  discretion  compels  si 
lence.  Moreover,  the  vastness  of  his 
knowledge  is  out  of  accord  with  the 
puniness  of  our  intelligence.  It  cannot 
be  communicated,  because  there  is  no 
avenue  of  approach.  "The  attempt  to 
tell  the  world  what  I  know  now  is  like 
trying  to  play  B'eethoven  on  a  penny 
whistle.  I  feel  as  a  mathematician  would 
feel  should  he  set  himself  down  to  teach 
addition  to  small  children.  I  dare  not 
tell  you  more  than  I  do,  for  you  could 
not  contain  it." 

And  so  we  are  told  nothing. 

In    the   little   book   entitled,    "Thy 

Son  Live th,"  which  is  said  to  have  been 

dictated  by  an  American  soldier,  killed 

in  Flanders,  to  his  mother,  we  have  a 

49 


Points  of  Friction 

cheerful  picture  of  active  young  spirits 
"carrying  on"  the  business  of  war,  re 
lieving  the  wounded,  soothing  the  dy 
ing,  working  up  wireless  communica 
tions  ("The  German  operators  cannot 
see  us  when  we  are  around  "),  and  occa 
sionally  playing  the  part  of  the  gods 
before  the  walls  of  Troy. 

"I  told  you  that  we  were  not  given 
any  power  over  bullets,  that  we  can 
comfort,  but  not  save  from  what  you 
call  death.  That  is  not  quite  the  case, 
I  find.  Jack  Wells  directed  me  to  stand 
by  a  junior  lieutenant  to-day,  and  im 
pel  him  this  way  and  that  to  avoid 
danger.  I  discovered  that  my  percep 
tions  are  much  more  sensitive  than  they 
were  before  I  came  out.  I  can  estimate 
the  speed,  and  determine  the  course,  of 
shells.  I  stood  by  this  fellow,  nudged  him 
here  and  there,  and  kept  him  from  being 
hurt.  I  asked  Wells  if  that  was  an  an 
swer  to  prayer.  Wells  said,  'No,  the 
young  chap  is  an  inventor,  and  has  a 
50 


Dead  Authors 

job  ahead  of  him  that's  of  importance 
to  the  world.'" 

It  is  an  interesting  episode;  but  inter 
vention,  as  we  learn  from  Homer,  is  an 
open  game.  Perhaps  some  German  lieu 
tenant  had  a  job  ahead  of  him,  and  sci 
entifically-minded  German  ghosts  saved 
him  from  Allied  shells.  When  the  dead 
American  soldier  writes  that  he  is  going 
to  ''get  in  touch  with  Edison,"  and 
work  on  devices  to  combat  German 
machines,  we  ask  ourselves  whether 
dead  German  soldiers  got  in  touch  with 
Dr.  Haber,  and  helped  him  make  the 
poison  gas  and  the  flame-throwers 
which  won  the  Nobel  prize. 

That  the  son  should  proffer  much 
good  advice  to  his  mother  seems  inev 
itable,  because  it  is  the  passion  of  all 
communicative  spirits  to  advise.  He  is 
also  happy  to  correct  certain  false  im 
pressions  which  she  has  derived  from 
the  Evangelists. 

"  I  got  your  wire  calling  my  attention 
51 


Points  of  Friction 

to  the  scriptural  statement  that  in  Hea 
ven  there  is  neither  marriage  nor  giving 
in  marriage,  and  I  do  not  know  what  to 
say.  It  seemed  (until  you  gave  me  this 
jolt)  that  the  Bible  bears  out  every 
thing  that  I  have  been  able  to  tell  you. 
Perhaps  the  chronicler  got  balled  up  in 
this  particular  quotation.  For  love  and 
marriage  are  certainly  in  bud  and  flower 
here.  I  can  see  this  fac£  with  my  own 
eyes." 

He  can  do  more  than  see  it  with  his 
own  eyes.  He  can  feel  it  with  his  own 
heart.  A  few  pages  later  comes  this 
naive  confession: 

"Jack  Wells  and  I  are  very  close 
friends.  His  sister's  name  is  Alice,  and 
she  has  grown  up  in  the  country  beyond, 
where  his  folks  live.  It  seems  all  reach 
or  return  to  maturity.  Youth  blossoms 
and  flowers,  but  does  not  decay.  I  can 
call  up  her  vision  at  any  time.  But  I 
want  her  near." 

A  simple  and  guileless  little  book,  pre- 
52 


Dead  Authors 

posterous  only  in  the  assumption  that 
the  human  race  has  waited  for  centuries 
to  receive  its  revelations. 

We  have  been  told  that  the  Great  War 
stands  responsible  for  our  mental  dis 
turbance,  for  the  repeated  assaults  upon 
taste  and  credulity  before  which  the 
walls  of  our  minds  are  giving  way.  Mr. 
Howells,  observing  rather  sympatheti 
cally  the  ghostly  stir  and  thrill  which 
pervades  literature,  asked  if  it  were 
due  to  the  overwhelming  numbers  of 
the  dead,  if  it  came  to  us  straight  from 
sunken  ships,  and  from  the  battle-fields 
of  Europe. 

What  answer  can  we  make  save  that 
natural  laws  work  independently  of  cir 
cumstance?  A  single  dead  man  and  a 
million  of  dead  men  stand  in  the  same 
relation  to  the  living.  If  ever  there  was 
a  time  when  it  was  needful  to  hold  on 
to  our  sanity  with  all  our  might,  that 
time  is  now.  Our  thoughts  turn,  and  will 
long  turn,  to  the  men  who  laid  down 
53 


Points  of  Friction 

their  lives  for  our  safety.  How  could  it 
be  otherwise?  There  is,  and  there  has 
always  been,  a  sense  of  comradeship 
with  the  departed.  It  is  a  noble  and  a 
still  comradeship,  untarnished  by  illu 
sions,  unvulgarized  by  extravagant  de 
tails.  Newman  has  portrayed  it  in  "A 
Voice  from  Afar";  and  Mr.  Rowland 
Thirlmere  has  made  it  the  theme  of 
some  very  simple  and  touching  verses 
called  "Jimmy  Doane."  The  elderly 
Englishman  who  has  lost  his  friend,  a 
young  American  aviator,  "generous, 
clever,  and  confident,"  and  who  sits 
alone,  with  his  heart  cold  and  sore,  feels 
suddenly  the  welcome  nearness  of  the 
dead.  No  table  heaves  its  .heavy  legs  to 
announce  that  silent  presence.  No  alpha 
bet  is  needed  for  his  message.  But  the 
living  man  says  simply  to  his  friend, 
"My  house  is  always  open  to  you,"  and 
hopes  that  they  may  sit  quietly  together 
when  the  dreams  of  both  are  realized, 
and  the  hour  of  deliverance  comes. 
54 


Dead  Authors 

The  attitude  of  spirit  authors  to  the 
war  varies  from  the  serene  detachment 
of  Raymond,  who  had  been  a  soldier, 
to  the  passionate  partisanship  of  the 
"Living  Dead  Man,"  who  had  been  a 
civilian;  but  who,  like  the  anonymous 
"Son,"  cannot  refrain  from  playing  a 
lively  part  in  the  struggle.  "Many  a 
time  have  I  clutched  with  my  too-tenu 
ous  hands  a  German  soldier  who  was 
about  to  disgrace  himself."  Harry  and 
Helen  express  some  calm  regret  that 
the  lack  of  unselfish  love  should  make 
war  possible,  and  report  that  "Hughey" 
—  their  brother-in-law's  brother  —  "has 
gone  to  throw  all  he  possesses  of  light 
into  the  dark  struggle."  Apparently  his 
beams  failed  signally  to  illuminate  the 
gloom,  which  is  not  surprising  when 
we  learn  that  "a  selfish  or  ill-natured 
thought"  (say  from  a  Bulgarian  or  a 
Turk)  "lowers  the  rate  of  vibration 
throughout  the  entire  universe."  They 
also  join  the  "White  Cross"  nurses,  and 
55 


Points  of  Friction 

are  gratified  that  their  knowledge  of 
French  enables  them  to  receive  and  en 
courage  the  rapidly  arriving  French  sol 
diers.  Helen,  being  the  better  scholar  of 
the  two,  is  able  to  give  first  aid,  while 
Harry  brushes  up  his  verbs.  In  the  ab 
sence  of  French  caretakers,  who  seem 
to  have  all  gone  elsewhere,  the  two 
young  Americans  are  in  much  demand. 
Remote  from  such  crass  absurdities 
(which  have  their  confiding  readers) 
is  the  quiet,  if  somewhat  perfunctory, 
counsel  given  by  "  The  Invisible  Guide  " 
to  Mr.  C.  Lewis  Hind,  and  by  him  trans 
mitted  to  the  public.  There  is  nothing 
offensive  or  distasteful  in  this  little  vol 
ume  which  has  some  charming  chapters, 
and  which  purports  to  be  an  answer  to 
the  often  asked  question,  "How  may 
I  enter  into  communion  with  the  de 
parted?"  If  the  admonitions  of  the  dead 
soldier,  who  is  the  "Guide,"  lack  pith 
and  marrow,  they  do  not  lack  it  more 
perceptibly  than  do  the  admonitions  of 

56 


Dead  Authors 

living  counsellors,  and  he  is  always  com- 
mendably  brief.  What  depresses  us  is 
the  quality  of  his  pacifism  expressed  at 
a  time  which  warranted  the  natural  and 
noble  anger  awakened  by  injustice. 

It  is  the  peculiarity  of  all  pacifists 
that  wrongdoing  disturbs  them  less  than 
does  the  hostility  it  provokes.  The 
"Guide"  has  not  a  sigh  to  waste  over 
Belgium  and  Serbia.  Air-raids  and  sub 
marines  fail  to  disturb  his  serenity.  But 
he  cannot  endure  a  picture  called  Mi 
trailleuse,  which  represents  four  French 
soldiers  firing  a  machine  gun.  When  his 
friend,  the  author,  so  far  forgets  himself 
as  to  be  angry  at  the  insolence  of  some 
Germans,  the  "Guide,"  pained  by  such 
intolerance,  refuses  any  communica 
tion;  and  when,  in  more  cheerful  mood, 
the  author  ventures  to  be  a  bit  enthusi 
astic  over  the  gallant  feats  of  a  young 
aviator,  the  "Guide"  murmurs  faintly 
and  reproachfully,  "It  is  the  mothers 
that  suffer." 

57 


Points  of  Friction 

One  is  forced  to  doubt  if  guidance  such 
as  this  would  ever  have  led  to  victory. 

Raymond,  though  he  has  been  thrust 
before  the  public  without  pity  and  with 
out  reserve,  has  shown  no  disposition  to 
enter  the  arena  of  authorship.  He  has 
been  content  to  prattle  to  his  own  fam 
ily  about  the  conditions  that  surround 
him,  about  the  brick  house  he  lives  in, 
the  laboratories  he  visits,  where  "all 
sorts  of  things"  are  manufactured  out 
of  "essences  and  ether  and  gases,"  — 
rather  like  German  war  products,  and 
the  lectures  that  he  attends.  The  sub 
jects  of  these  lectures  are  spirituality, 
concentration,  and  —  alas!  —  "the pro 
jection  of  uplifting  and  helpful  thoughts 
to  those  on  the  earth  plane."  Such 
scraps  of  wisdom  as  are  vouchsafed  him 
he  passes  dutifully  on  to  his  parents. 
He  tells  his  mother  that,  on  the  spiritual 
plane,  "  Rank  does  n't  count  as  a  virtue. 
High  rank  comes  by  being  virtuous." 
"Kind  hearts  are  more  than  coronets." 

58 


Dead  Authors 

Also  that  "It  is  n't  always  the  parsons 
that  go  highest  first/'  and  that  "It 
is  n't  what  you  Ve  professed ;  it 's  what 
youVe  done."  Something  of  this  kind 
we  have  long  suspected.  Something  of 
this  kind  has  long  been  hinted  from  the 
plain  pulpits  of  the  world. 

I  fear  it  is  the  impatience  of  the  hu 
man  mind,  the  hardness  of  the  human 
heart,  which  make  us  restless  under  too 
much  preaching.  Volume  after  volume 
of  "messages"  have  been  sent  to  us  by 
spirits  during  the  last  few  years.  There 
is  no  fault  to  be  found  with  any  of  them, 
and  that  sad  word,  "uplifting,"  may 
well  apply  to  all.  Is  it  possible  that,  when 
we  die,  we  shall  preach  to  one  another; 
or  is  it  the  elusiveness  of  ghostly  audi 
ences  which  drives  determined  preach 
ers  to  the  ouija  board?  The  somewhat 
presumptuous  title,  "To  Walk  With 
God,"  which  Mrs.  Lane  and  Mrs.  Beale 
have  given  to  their  volume  of  revela 
tions,  was,  we  are  told,  commanded  by 
59 


Points  of  Friction 

the  spirit  who  dictated  it.  "  Stephen," 
the  dead  soldier  who  stands  responsible 
for  the  diffuse  philosophy  of  "Our  Un 
seen  Guest,"  dedicates  the  book  to  the 
"wistful "  questioners  who  seek  enlight 
enment  at  his  hands.  "Anne  Simon,"  a 
transcendental  spirit  with  a  strong  bias 
for  hyphenated  words,  sends  her  modest 
"Message,"  dictated  through  her  hus 
band,  to  "world-mortals 'for  their  re 
generation." 

How  lightly  that  tremendous  word, 
"regeneration,"  is  bandied  about  by  our 
ghostly  preceptors.  Mr.  Basil  King,  in 
"The  Abolishing  of  Death,"  reports  the 
spirit  of  Henry  Talbot,  the  distinguished 
Boston  chemist,  assaying,  "My especial 
mission  is  to  regenerate  the  world."  It  is 
a  large  order.  The  ungrateful  but  always 
curious  mortal  who  would  like  a  few 
practical  hints  about  chemistry,  is  told 
instead  that  "grief  is  unrhythmical," 
which  proves  that  Mr.  Talbot  never 
read  "In  Memoriam";  or  finds  himself 
60 


Dead  Authors 

beset  by  figurative  phrases.  i '  Literature 
is  the  sun,  music  is  the  water,  sculpture 
is  the  earth,  dancing  is  life,  and  painting 
is  the  soul.  These  in  their  purity  can 
never  be  evil.  I  have  spread  a  table  in 
your  sight.  Whatever  is  on  it  is  for  your 
use.  Take  freely,  and  give  it  to  others. 
They  hunger  for  the  food." 

For  what  do  we  hunger?  For  any 
word  which  will  help  us  on  our  hard  but 
interesting  way,  any  word  which  is  wise, 
or  practically  useful,  or  beautiful.  It  has 
been  revealed  to  Mr.  King  that  poets  as 
splendid  as  Homer  and  Shakespeare 
bloom  in  the  spirit  world.  Why,  in  the 
general  assault  by  dead  authors,  are 
they  the  silent  ones?  Could  they  not  give 
us  one  good  play,  one  good  lyric,  one 
good  sonnet,  just  to  show  a  glint  of  their 
splendour?  \Vhat  is  wrong  with  psychic 
currents  that  they  bear  nothing  of  value? 
"Stephen,"  the  "Unseen  Guest,"  as 
sures  us  that  many  a  man  we  call  a 
genius  "simply  puts  into  words  the 
61 


Points  of  Friction 

thoughts  of  some  greater  mentality  in 
the  other  life."  But  this  is  not  adding  to 
our  store.  It  is  trying  to  take  away  from 
us  the  merit  of  what  we  have.  "Anne 
Simon"  reads  the  riddle  thus: "  In  earth- 
proximity  the  spirit  leaves  behind  him 
his  efficacy,  for  the  time,  of  Heaven- 
emanation;  so  it  is  better  to  open  the 
heart,  and  wish  the  larger  beneficence 
than  to  visualize  the  spirit-form.  For  the 
spirit-form  without  its  spirit-treasure 
does  not  bring  the  mortal  to  the  higher 
places." 

Which,  though  not  wholly  intelligible, 
is  doubtless  true. 

If  we  do  not  get  what  we  hunger  for, 
what  is  it  we  receive?  Professor  Hyslop 
once  assured  me  that  the  authorship  of 
"Jap  Herron"  was  "proved  beyond 
question."  This  contented  him,  but  dis 
mayed  me.  The  eclipse  of  the  "merry 
star  "  which  danced  above  Mark  Twain's 
cradle,  and  which  shone  on  him  fitfully 
through  life,  suggests  direful  possibili- 
62 


Dead  Authors 

ties  in  the  future.  It  is  whispered  that 
O.  Henry  is  busily  dictating  allegories 
and  tracts;  that  Dickens  may  yet  reveal 
"The  Mystery  of  Edwin  Drood";  that 
Washington  Irving  has  loomed  on  the 
horizon  of  an  aspiring  medium.  The 
publication  of  "Shakespeare's  Revela 
tions,  by  Shakespeare's  Spirit:  A  Soul's 
Record  of  Defeat,"  adds  a  touch  of  fan 
tastic  horror  to  the  situation.  The  taste 
of  the  world,  like  the  sanity  of  the  world, 
has  seemingly  crashed  into  impotence. 
Patience  Worth  is  fortunate  in  so  far 
that  she  has  no  earlier  reputation  at 
stake.  In  fact,  we  are  informed  that 
three  of  her  stories  are  told  in  "a  dia 
lect  which,  taken  as  a  whole,  was  prob 
ably  never  spoken,  and  certainly  never 
written.  Each  seems  to  be  a  composite 
of  dialect  words  and  idioms  of  different 
periods  and  different  localities."  It  is 
Mr.  Yost's  opinion,  however,  that  her 
long  historical  novel,  "The  Sorry  Tale," 
is  composed  "  in  a  literary  tongue  some- 

.63 


Points  of  Friction 

\vhat  resembling  the  language  of  the 
King  James  version  of  the  Bible  in  form 
and  style,  but  with  the  unmistakable 
verbal  peculiarities  of  Patience  Worth." 
"What  bringeth  thee  asearch?"  and 
"Who  hath  the  trod  of  the  antelope?" 
are  doubtless  verbal  peculiarities;  but 
for  any  resemblance  to  the  noble  and 
vigorous  lucidity  of  the  English  Bible 
we  may  search  in  vain  tnrough  the  six 
hundred  and  forty  closely  printed  pages 
of  this  confused,  wandering,  sensuous, 
and  wholly  unreadable  narrative,  which 
purports  to  tell  the  life-history  of  the 
penitent  thief.  I  quote  a  single  para 
graph,  snatched  at  random  from  the 
text,  which  may  serve  as  a  sample  of 
the  whole: 

"And  within,  upon  the  skins'-pack, 
sat  Samuel,  who  listed  him,  and  lo,  the 
jaws  of  him  hung  ope.  And  Jacob  wailed, 
and  the  Jew's  tongue  of  him  sounded  as 
the  chatter  of  fowls,  and  he  spake  of 
the  fool  that  plucked  of  his  ass  that  he 
64 


Dead  Authors 

save  of  down.  Yea,  and  walked  him  at 
the  sea's  edge,  and  yet  sought  o'  pools. 
And  he  held  aloft  unto  the  men  who 
hung  them  o'er  the  bin's  place  handsful 
of  brass  and  shammed  precious  stuffs, 
and  cried  him  out." 

Six  hundred  and  forty  pages  of  this 
kind  of  writing  defy  a  patient  world. 
And  we  are  threatened  with  "  the  larger 
literature  to  come" ! 

"Hope  Trueblood,"  Patience  Worth's 
last  novel,  is  written  in  intelligible  Eng 
lish,  as  is  also  the  greater  part  of  her 
verse.  The  story  deals  with  the  doubtful 
legitimacy  of  a  little  girl  in  an  English 
village  which  has  lived  its  life  along  such 
straight  lines  that  the  mere  existence  of 
a  bastard  child,  or  a  child  thought  to  be 
a  bastard,  rocks  it  to  its  foundations, 
and  furnishes  sufficient  matter  for  vio 
lent  and  heart-wounding  scenes  from 
the  first  chapter  to  the  last.  It  is  diffi 
cult  to  follow  the  fortunes  of  this  child 
(who  might  have  been  the  great  original 

65 


Points  of  Friction 

devil  baby  of  Hull  House  for  the  pother 
she  creates)  because  of  the  confusion  of 
the  narrative,  and  because  of  the  cruelly 
high  pitch  at  which  all  emotions  are 
sustained ;  but  we  gather  that  the  mar 
riage  lines  are  at  last  triumphantly  pro 
duced,  and  that  the  village  is  suffered 
to  relapse  into  the  virtuous  somnolence 
of  earlier  days. 

Mr.  Yost,  who  has  edited  all  of  Pa 
tience  Worth's  books,  and  who  is  per 
haps  a  partial  critic,  praises  her  poems 
for  their  rare  individuality.  We  may 
search  in  vain,  he  says,  through  litera 
ture  for  anything  resembling  them. 
"They  are  alike  in  the  essential  features 
of  all  poetry,  and  yet  they  are  unalike. 
There  is  something  in  them  that  is  not 
in  other  poetry.  In  the  profusion  of  their 
metaphor  there  is  an  etherealness  that 
more  closely  resembles  Shelley,  perhaps, 
than  any  other  poet ;  but  the  beauty  of 
Shelley's  poems  is  almost  wholly  in  their 
diction;  there  is  in  him  no  profundity  of 
66 


Dead  Authors 

thought.  In  these  poems  there  is  both 
beauty  and  depth,  —  and  something 
else." 

Whatever  this  "something  else"  may 
be,  it  is  certainly  not  rhyme  or  rhythm. 
The  verses  brook  no  bondage,  but  run 
loosely  on  with  the  perilous  ease  of  en 
franchisement.  For  the  most  part  they 
are  of  the  kind  which  used  to  be  classi 
fied  by  compilers  as  "  Poems  of  Nature," 
and  "  Poems  of  Sentiment  and  Reflec 
tion."  Spring,  summer,  autumn,  and 
winter  are  as  inspirational  for  the  dead 
as  for  the  living. 

U'T  is  season's  parting. 

Yea,  and  earth  doth  weep.  The  Winter  cometh, 
And  he  bears  her  jewels  for  the  decking 
Of  his  bride.  A  glittered  crown 
Shall  fall  'pon  earth,  and  sparkled  drop 
Shall  stand  like  gem  that  flasheth 
'Pon  a  nobled  brow.  Yea,  the  tears 
Of  earth  shall  freeze  and  drop 
As  pearls,  the  necklace  o'  the  earth, 
'T  is  season's  parting.  Yea, 
The  earth  doth  weep.  _ 
'T  is  Fall." 

67 


Points  of  Friction 

These  simple  statements  might  justifi 
ably  be  printed  without  the  capital  letters 
which  distinguish  prose  from  verse;  but 
we  can  understand  them,  and  we  are  fa 
miliar  with  the  phenomena  they  describe. 
Byron  has  recorded  in  a  letter  to 
Hoppner  the  profound  impression  made 
upon  him  by  two  concise  epitaphs  in  the 
cemetery  of  Bologna. 

MARTINI  LUIGI 
Implora  pace. 

LUCREZIA  PICINI 
Implora  eterna  quicte. 

It  seemed  to  the  poet  —  himself  in  need 
of  peace  —  that  all  the  weariness  of  life, 
and  all  the  gentle  humility  of  the  tired 
but  trusting  soul,  were  compressed 
into  those  lines.  There  is  nothing  calam 
itous  in  death. 

"The  patrimony  of  a  little  mould, 
And  entail  of  four  planks," 

is  the  common  heritage  of  mankind, 

and  we  accept  it  reverently.  A  belief  in 

68 


Dead  Authors 

the  immortality  of  the  soul  has  been 
fairly  familiar  to  Christendom  before 
the  spiritualists  adopted  it  as  their 
exclusive  slogan.  But  to  escape  from 
time,  only  to  enter  upon  an  eternity 
shorn  of  everything  which  could  make 
eternity  endurable,  to  pass  through  the 
narrow  door  which  opens  on  the  high 
ways  of  God,  only  to  find  ourselves  dic 
tating  dull  books,  and  delivering  plati 
tudinous  lectures,  —  which  of  us  has 
courage  to  face  such  possibilities! 

We  are  told  that  once,  when  Patience 
Worth  was  spelling  out  the  endless  pages 
of  "The  Sorry  Tale,"  she  came  to  a  sud 
den  stop,  then  wrote,  "This  be  nuff," 
and  knocked  off  for  the  night.  A  blessed 
phrase,  and,  of  a  certainty,  her  finest  in 
spiration.  Would  that  all  dead  authors 
would  adopt  it  as  their  motto;  and  with 
ouija  boards,  and  table-legs,  and  auto 
matic  pencils,  write  as  their  farewell 
message  to  the  world  those  three  short, 
comely  words,  "This  be  nuff." 


Consolations  of  the 
Conservative 

THERE  is  a  story  of  Hawthorne's 
which  is  little  known,  because  it  is 
too  expansively  dull  to  be  read.  It  tells 
how  the  nations  of  the  earth,  convulsed 
by  a  mighty  spasm  of  reform,  rid  them 
selves  of  the  tools  and  symbols  of  all 
they  held  in  abhorrence.  Because  they 
would  have  no  more  war,  they  destroyed 
the  weapons  of  the  world.  Because  they 
would  have  no  more  drunkenness,  they 
destroyed  its  wines  and  spirits.  Because 
they  banned  self-indulgence,  they  de 
stroyed  tobacco,  tea,  and  coffee.  Be 
cause  they  would  have  all  men  to  be 
equal,  they  destroyed  the  insignia  of 
rank,  from  the  crown  jewels  of  England 
to  the  medal  of  the  Cincinnati.  Wealth 
itself  was  not  permitted  to  survive,  lest 
the  new  order  be  as  corrupt  as  was  the 
70 


Conservative's  Consolations 

old.  Nothing  was  left  but  the  human 
heart  with  its  imperishable  and  inalien 
able  qualities ;  and  while  it  beats  within 
the  human  breast,  the  world  must  still 
be  moulded  by  its  passions.  "When 
Cain  wished  to  slay  his  brother,"  mur 
mured  a  cynic,  watching  the  great  guns 
trundled  to  the  blaze,  "he  was  at  no  loss 
for  a  weapon." 

If  belief  in  the  perfectibility  of  man 
—  and  not  of  man  only,  but  of  govern 
ments  —  is  the  inspiration  of  liberalism, 
of  radicalism,  of  the  spirit  that  calls 
clamorously  for  change,  and  that  has 
requisitioned  the  words  reform  and  pro 
gression,  sympathy  with  man  and  with 
his  work,  with  the  beautiful  and  imper 
fect  things  he  has  made  of  the  chequered 
centuries,  is  the  keynote  of  conserva 
tism.  The  temperamental  conservative 
is  a  type  vulnerable  to  ridicule,  yet  not 
more  innately  ridiculous  than  his  neigh 
bours.  He  has  been  carelessly  defined  as 
a  man  who  is  cautious  because  he  has  a 


Points  of  Friction 

good  income,  and  content  because  he  is 
well  placed ;  who  is  thick-headed  because 
he  lacks  vision,  and  close-hearted  be 
cause  he  is  deaf  to  the  moaning  wind 
which  is  the  cry  of  unhappy  humanity 
asking  justice  from  a  world  which  has 
never  known  how  to  be  just.  Lecky, 
who  had  a  neat  hand  at  analysis,  char 
acterized  the  great  conflicting  parties 
in  an  axiom  which  pleased  neither: 
"Stupidity  in  all  its  forms  is  Tory;  folly 
in  all  its  forms  is  Whig." 

These  things  have  been  too  often  said 
to  be  quite  wrorth  the  saying.  Stupidity 
is  not  the  prerogative  of  any  one  class  or 
creed.  It  is  Heaven's  free  gift  to  men  of 
all  kinds,  and  conditions,  and  civiliza 
tions.  A  practical  man,  said  Disraeli,  is 
one  who  perpetuates  the  blunders  of  his 
predecessor  instead  of  striking  out  into 
blunders  of  his  own.  Temperamental 
conservatism  is  the  dower  (not  to  be 
coveted)  of  men  in  whom  delight  and 
doubt  —  I  had  almost  said  delight  and 
72 


Conservative's  Consolations 

despair  —  contend  for  mastery ;  whose 
enjoyment  of  colour,  light,  atmosphere, 
tradition,  language  and  literature  is 
balanced  by  chilling  apprehensiveness ; 
whose  easily  won  pardon  for  the  shame 
less  revelations  of  an  historic  past  brings 
with  it  no  healing  belief  in  the  trium 
phant  virtues  of  the  future. 

The  conservative  is  not  an  idealist, 
any  more  than  he  is  an  optimist.  Ideal 
ism  has  worn  thin  in  these  days  of 
colossal  violence  and  colossal  cupidity. 
Perhaps  it  has  always  been  a  cloak  for 
more  crimes  than  even  liberty  sheltered 
under  her  holy  name.  The  French 
Jacobins  were  pure  idealists;  but  they 
translated  the  splendour  of  their  aspi 
rations,  the  nobility  and  amplitude  of 
their  great  conception,  into  terms  of 
commonplace  official  murder,  which  are 
all  the  more  displeasing  to  look  back 
upon  because  of  the  riot  of  sentimental- 
ism  and  impiety  which  disfigured  them. 
It  is  bad  enough  to  be  bad,  but  to  be 
73 


Points  of  Friction 

bad  in  bad  taste  is  unpardonable.  If  we 
had  resolutely  severed  the  word  "ideal 
ism"  from  the  bloody  chaos  which  is 
Russia,  we  should  have  understood  more 
clearly,  and  have  judged  no  less  leni 
ently,  the  seething  ambitions  of  men 
who  passionately  desired,  and  desire, 
control.  The  elemental  instinct  of  self- 
preservation  is  the  first  step  to  the 
equally  elemental  instinct  bf  self-inter 
est.  Natural  rights,  about  which  we 
chatter  freely,  are  not  more  equably 
preserved  by  denying  them  to  one  class 
of  men  than  by  denying  them  to  an 
other.  They  have  been  ill-protected 
under  militarism  and  capitalism;  and 
their  subversion  has  been  a  sin  crying 
out  to  Heaven  for  vengeance.  They  are 
not  protected  at  all  under  any  Soviet 
government  so  far  known  to  report. 

Nothing  is  easier  than  to  make  the 

world  safe  for  democracy.  Democracy 

is  playing  her  own  hand  in  the  game. 

She  has  every  intention  and  every  op- 

74 


Conservative's  Consolations 

portunity  to  make  the  world  safe  for 
herself.  But  democracy  may  be  di 
vorced  from  freedom,  and  freedom  is 
the  breath  of  man's  nostrils,  the  strength 
of  his  sinews,  the  sanction  of  his  soul. 
It  is  as  painful  to  be  tyrannized  over  by 
a  proletariat  as  by  a  tsar  or  by  a  cor 
poration,  and  it  is  in  a  measure  more 
disconcerting,  because  of  the  greater 
incohesion  of  the  process.  It  is  as  revolt 
ing  to  be  robbed  by  a  reformer  as  by  a 
trust.  Oppressive  taxation,  which  forced 
the  great  Revolution  upon  France ;  dis 
honest  "deals,"  which  have  made  a 
mockery  of  justice  in  the  United  States; 
ironic  laws,  framed  for  the  convenient 
looting  of  the  bourgeoisie  in  Russia;  — 
there  is  as  much  idealism  in  one  device 
as  in  the  others.  Sonorous  phrases  like 
"  reconstruction  of  the  world's  psychol 
ogy,"  and  "creation  of  a  new  world- 
atmosphere,"  are  mental  sedatives,  drug 
words,  calculated  to  put  to  sleep  any 
uneasy  apprehensions.  They  may  mean 
75 


Points  of  Friction 

anything,  and  they  do  mean  nothing, 
so  that  it  is  safe  to  go  on  repeating 
them.  But  a  Bolshevist  official  was  ar 
rested  in  Petrograd  in  March,  1919, 
charged  with  embezzling  fifteen  million 
rubles.  Not  content  with  the  excesses  of 
the  new  r6gime,  he  must  needs  revert  to 
the  excesses  of  the  old,  —  a  discourag 
ing  study  in  evolution.  » 

When  Lord  Hugh  Cecil  published  his 
analysis  of  conservatism  nine  years  ago, 
the  British  reviewers  devoted  a  great 
deal  of  time  to  its  consideration,  —  not 
so  much  because  they  cared  for  what  the 
author  had  to  say  (though  he  said  it 
thoughtfully  and  well),  as  because  they 
had  opinions  of  their  own  on  the  sub 
ject,  and  desired  to  give  them  utterance. 
Cecil's  conception  of  temperamental,  as 
apart  from  modern  British  political  con 
servatism  (which  he  dates  from  Pitt  and 
Burke),  affords  the  most  interesting 
part  of  the  volume;  but  the  line  of 
demarcation  is  a  wavering  one.  That 
76 


Conservative's  Consolations 

famous  sentence  of  Burke's  concerning 
innovations  that  are  not  necessarily 
reforms,  "They  shake  the  public  secur 
ity,  they  menace  private  enjoyment," 
shows  the  alliance  between  tempera 
ment  and  valuation.  It  was  Burke's 
passionate  delight  in  life's  expression, 
rather  than  in  life's  adventure,  that 
made  him  alive  to  its  values.  He  was  not 
averse  to  change:  change  is  the  law  of 
the  universe ;  but  he  changed  in  order  to 
preserve.  The  constructive  forces  of  the 
world  persistently  won  his  deference 
and  support. 

The  intensely  British  desire  to  have  a 
moral,  and,  if  possible,  a  religious  foun 
dation  for  a  political  creed  would  com 
mand  our  deepest  respect,  were  the  hu 
man  mind  capable  of  accommodating 
its  convictions  to  morality  and  religion, 
instead  of  accommodating  morality  and 
religion  to  its  convictions.  Cecil,  a  stern 
individualist,  weighted  with  a  heavy 
sense  of  personal  responsibility,  and  dis- 
77 


Points  of  Friction 

posed  to  distrust  the  kindly  intervention 
of  the  State,  finds,  naturally  enough, 
that  Christianity  is  essentially  individu 
alistic.  "There  is  not  a  line  of  the  New 
Testament  that  can  be  quoted  in  favour 
of  the  enlargement  of  the  function  of 
the  State  beyond  the  elementary  duty 
of  maintaining  order  and  suppressing 
crime." 

The  obvious  retort  to  this  would  be 
that  there  is  not  a  line  in  the  New  Testa 
ment  which  can  be  quoted  in  favour  of 
the  confinement  of  the  function  of  the 
State  to  the  elementary  duty  of  main 
taining  order  and  suppressing  crime. 
The  counsel  of  Christ  is  a  counsel  of 
perfection,  and  a  counsel  of  perfection 
is  necessarily  personal  and  intimate. 
What  the  world  asks  now  are  state 
reforms  and  social  reforms,  —  in  other 
words,  the  reformation  of  our  neigh 
bours.  What  the  Gospel  asks,  and  has 
always  asked,  is  the  reformation  of  our 
selves,  —  a  harassing  and  importunate 
78 


Conservative's  Consolations 

demand.  Mr.  Chesterton  spoke  but  the 
truth  when  he  said  that  Christianity 
has  not  been  tried  and  found  wanting. 
It  has  been  found  difficult,  and  not 
tried. 

Cecil's  conclusions  anent  the  uncon 
cern  of  the  Gospels  with  forms  of  gov 
ernment  were,  strangely  enough,  the 
points  very  ardently  disputed  by  Bible- 
reading  England.  A  critic  in  the  "  Con 
temporary  Review  "  made  the  interest 
ing  statement  that  the  political  economy 
of  the  New  Testament  is  radical  and 
sound.  He  illustrated  his  argument  with 
the  parable  of  the  labourers  in  the  vine 
yard,  pointing  out  that  the  master  paid 
the  men  for  the  hours  in  which  they  had 
had  no  work.  "In  the  higher  econom 
ics,"  he  said,  "the  State,  as  represent 
ing  the  community,  is  responsible  for 
those  who,  through  the  State's  mal 
feasance,  misfeasance,  or  nonfeasance, 
are  unable  to  obtain  the  work  for  which 
they  wait." 

79 


Points  of  Friction 

But  apart  from  the  fact  that  the  par 
able  is  meant  to  have  a  spiritual  and  not 
a  material  significance,  there  is  nothing 
in  the  Gospel  to  indicate  that  the  mas 
ter  considered  that  he  owed  the  late 
comers  their  day's  wage.  His  comment 
upon  his  own  action  disclaims  this  as 
sumption:  "  Is  it  not  lawful  for  me  to  do 
what  I  will  with  mine  own?"  And  it  is 
worthy  of  note  that  the  protest  against 
his  liberality  comes,  not  from  other 
vine-growers  objecting  to  a  precedent, 
but  from  the  labourers  who  cannot  be 
brought  to  see  that  an  hour's  work  done 
by  their  neighbours  may  be  worth  as 
much  as  twelve  hours'  work  done  by 
themselves.  Human  nature  has  not  al 
tered  perceptibly  in  the  course  of  two 
thousand  years. 

Great  Britain's  experiment  in  doling 
out  "unemployment  pay"  was  based  on 
expediency,  and  on  the  generous  hy 
pothesis  that  men  and  women,  outside 
of  the  professional  pauper  class,  would 
80 


Conservative's  Consolations 

prefer  work  with  wages  to  wages  with 
out  work.  A  cartoon  in  "Punch"  repre 
senting  the  Minister  of  Labour  blandly 
and  insinuatingly  presenting  a  house 
maid's  uniform  to  an  outraged  "ex- 
munitionette,"  who  is  the  Govern 
ment's  contented  pensioner,  suggests 
some  rift  in  this  harmonious  under 
standing.  Progressives  have  branded 
temperamental  conservatism  as  distrust 
of  the  unknown,  —  a  mental  attitude 
which  is  the  antithesis  of  love  of  adven 
ture.  But  distrust  of  the  unknown  is  a 
thin  and  fleeting  emotion  compared  with 
distrust  of  human  nature,  which  is  per 
fectly  well  known.  To  know  it  is  not 
necessarily  to  quarrel  with  it.  It  is 
merely  to  take  it  into  account. 

Economics  and  ethics  have  little  in 
common.  They  meet  in  amity,  only  to 
part  in  coldness.  Our  preference  for  our 
own  interests  is  essentially  and  vitally 
un-Christian.  The  competitive  system  is 
not  a  Christian  system.  But  it  lies  at  the 
81 


Points  of  Friction 

root  of  civilization;  it  has  its  noble  as 
well  as  its  ignoble  side;  it  is  the  main 
spring  of  both  nationalism  and  inter 
nationalism;  it  is  the  force  which  sup 
ports  governments,  and  the  force  which 
violently  disrupts  them.  Men  have  risen 
above  self-interest  for  life;  nations,  su 
perbly  for  a  time.  The  sense  of  shock 
which  was  induced  by  Germany's  acute 
reversion  to  barbarism  was  deeper  than 
the  sense  of  danger  induced  by  her 
vaulting  ambitions.  There  is  no  such 
passionate  feeling  in  life  as  that  which 
is  stirred  by  the  right  and  duty  of  de 
fence  ;  and  for  more  than  four  years  the 
Allied  nations  defended  the  world  from 
evils  which  the  world  fancied  it  had  long 
outgrown.  The  duration  of  the  war  is 
the  most  miraculous  part  of  the  mi 
raculous  tale.  A  monotony  of  heroism,  a 
monotony  of  sacrifice,  transcends  imag 
ination. 

Now  it  is  over.  Citizens  of  the  United 
States  walked  knee-deep  in  newspapers 
82 


Conservative's  Consolations 

for  a  joyous  night  to  signify  their  satis 
faction,  and  at  once  embarked  on  viva 
cious  disputes  over  memorial  arches, 
and  statues,  and  monuments.  The  na 
tions  of  Europe,  with  lighter  pockets 
and  heavier  stakes,  began  to  consider 
difficulties  and  to  cultivate  doubts.  No 
one  can  fail  to  understand  the  destruc 
tive  forces  of  the  world,  because  they 
have  given  object-lessons  on  a  large  and 
lurid  scale.  But  the  constructive  forces 
are  on  trial,  with  imposing  chances  of 
success  or  failure.  They  are  still  in  the 
wordy  stage,  and  now,  as  never  before, 
the  world  is  sick  of  words.  "This  is 
neither  the  time  nor  the  place  for  su 
perfluous  phrases,"  said  Clemenceau 
(ironically,  one  hopes),  when  he  placed 
in  the  hands  of  Count  von  Brockdorff- 
Rantzau  a  peace  treaty  which  some 
stony-hearted  wag  has  informed  us  was 
precisely  the  length  of  "  A  Tale  of  Two 
Cities."  The  appalling  discursiveness  of 
the  Versailles  Conference  has  added  to 
83 


Points  of  Friction 

the  confusion  of  the  world;  but  fitted 
into  the  "Preamble"  of  the  Covenant 
of  the  League  of  Nations  are  five  lit 
tle  vocables,  four  of  them  monosyl 
labic,  which  embody  the  one  arresting 
thought  that  dominates  and  authorizes 
the  articles,  —  "Not  to  resort  to  war." 
These  five  words  are  the  crux  of  the 
whole  serious  and  sanguine  scheme. 
They  hold  the  hope  of  the  weak,  and 
the  happiness  of  the  insecure.  They 
deny  to  the  strong  the  pleasures  - 
and  the  means — of  coercion. 

The  rapid  changes  wrought  by  the 
twentieth  century  are  less  disconcert 
ing  to  the  temperamental  conservative, 
who  is  proverbially  slow,  than  move 
ments  which  take  time  to  be  persuasive. 
For  one  thing,  the  vast  spiral  along 
which  the  world  spins  brings  him  face 
to  face  with  new  friends  before  he  loses 
sight  of  the  old.  The  revolutionary  of 
yesterday  is  the  reactionary  of  to-day, 
and  the  conservative  finds  himself  hob- 
84 


Conservative's  Consolations 

nobbing  with  men  and  women  whom  he 
had  thought  remote  as  the  Poles. 

Two  interesting  examples  are  Ma 
dame  Catherine  Breshkovskaya  and 
Mr.  Samuel  Gompers.  Time  was,  and 
not  so  many  years  ago,  when  both  con 
doned  violence  —  the  violence  of  the 
Russian  Nihilist,  the  violence  of  the 
American  dynamiter  —  as  a  short  road 
to  justice.  Their  attitude  was  not  un 
like  that  of  the  first  Southern  lynchers: 
"We  take  the  law  into  our  own  hands, 
because  conditions  are  unbearable,  and 
the  State  affords  no  adequate  relief." 
But  Madame  Breshkovskaya  has  seen 
the  forces  she  helped  to  set  in  motion 
sweeping  in  unanticipated  and  shatter 
ing  currents.  She  has  seen  a  new  terror 
ism  arise  and  wield  the  weapons  of  the 
old  to  crush  man's  sacred  freedom.  The 
peasants  she  loved  have  been  beyond 
the  reach  of  her  help.  The  country  for 
which  she  suffered  thirty  years  of  exile 
repudiated  her.  Radicals  in  Europe  and 
85 


Points  of  Friction 

in  the  United  States  mocked  at  her. 
The  Grandmother  of  the  Revolution 
has  become  a  conservative  old  lady, 
concerned,  as  good  grandmothers  ought 
to  be,  with  the  welfare  of  little  children, 
and  pleading  pitifully  for  order  and  edu 
cation. 

As  for  Mr.  Gompers,  his  unswerving 
loyalty  to  the  cause  of  the  Allies,  his  un 
swerving  rejection  of  Germany  and  all 
her  works,  will  never  be  forgiven  by 
pacifists,  by  the  men  and  women  who 
had  no  word  of  protest  or  of  pity  when 
Belgium  was  invaded,  when  the  Lusi- 
tania  was  sunk,  when  towns  were 
burned,  civilians  butchered,  and  girls 
deported;  and  who  recovered  their 
speech  only  to  plead  for  the  nation  that 
had  disregarded  human  sufferings  and 
human  rights.  Mr.  Gompers  helped  as 
much  as  any  one  man  in  the  United 
States  to  win  the  war,  and  winning  a 
war  is  very  distasteful  to  those  who  do 
not  want  to  fight.  Therefore  has  he 
86 


Conservative's  Consolations 

been  relegated  by  international  Social 
ists,  who  held  hands  for  four  years  with 
Pan-German  Socialists,  to  the  ranks 
of  the  conservatives.  When  the  "Na 
tion,"  speaking  ex  cathedra,  says,  "The 
authority  of  the  old  machine-type  of 
labour  leader  like  Mr.  Gompers  is  im 
paired  beyond  help  or  hope,"  we  hear 
the  echo  of  the  voices  which  babbled 
about  capitalism  and  profiteering  in 
April,  1917.  The  Great  War  has  made 
and  unmade  the  friendships  of  the 
world.  If  the  radicals  propose  it  as  a 
test,  as  a  test  the  conservatives  will 
accept  it. 

The  successive  revolutions  which 
make  the  advance-guard  of  one  move 
ment  the  rear-guard  of  the  next  are  as 
expeditious  and  as  overwhelming  in  the 
field  of  art  as  in  the  fields  of  politics  and 
sociology.  In  the  spring  of  1877  an  ex- 
hibition  of  two  hundred  and  forty  pic 
tures,  the  work  of  eighteen  artists,  was 
opened  in  the  rue  le  Peletier,  Paris. 
87 


Points  of  Friction 

For  some  reason,  never  sufficiently  ex 
plained,  Parisians  found  in  these  can 
vases  a  source  of  infinite  diversion. 
They  went  to  the  exhibition  in  a  mood 
of  obvious  hilarity.  They  began  to 
laugh  while  they  were  still  in  the 
street,  they  laughed  as  they  climbed  the 
stairs,  they  were  convulsed  with  laugh 
ter  when  they  looked  at  the  pictures, 
they  laughed  every  tinie  they  talked 
them  over  with  their  friends. 

Now  what  were  these  mirth-provoking 
works  of  art?  Not  cubist  diagrams,  not 
geometrical  charts  of  human  anatomy, 
not  reversible  landscapes,  not  rainbow- 
tinted  pigs.  Such  exhilarants  lay  in  wait 
for  another  century  and  another  gener 
ation.  The  pictures  which  so  abundantly 
amused  Paris  in  1877  were  painted  by 
Claude  Monet,  Pissarro,  C6zanne,  Re 
noir,  —  men  of  genius,  who,  having 
devised  a  new  and  brilliant  technique, 
abandoned  themselves  with  too  little 
reserve  to  the  veracities  of  impression- 
88 


Conservative's  Consolations 

ism.  They  were  not  doctrinaires.  The 
peace  they  disturbed  was  only  the 
peace  of  immobility.  But  they  were 
drunk  with  new  wine.  Their  strength 
lay  in  their  courage  and  their  candour; 
their  weakness  in  the  not  unnatural 
assumption  that  they  were  expressing 
the  finalities  of  art. 

Defenders  they  had  in  plenty.  No 
pioneer  can  escape  from  the  hardship  of 
vindication.  Years  before,  Baudelaire 
had  felt  it  incumbent  upon  himself,  as 
a  professional  mutineer,  to  support  the 
"fearless  innovations"  of  Manet.  Zola, 
always  on  the  lookout  for  somebody  to 
attack  or  to  defend,  was  equally  en 
thusiastic  and  equally  choleric.  Loud 
disputation  rent  the  air  while  the  world 
sped  on  its  way,  and  lesser  artists  dis 
covered,  to  their  joy,  what  a  facile 
thing  it  was  to  produce  nerve-racking 
novelties.  In  1892,  John  La  Farge, 
wandering  disconsolately  through  the 
exhibitions  of  Paris,  wondered  if  there 


Points  of  Friction 

might  not  still  be  room  for  something 
simple  in  art. 

Ever  and  always  the  reproach  cast 
at  the  conservative  is  that  he  has  been 
blind  in  the  beginning  to  the  beauty 
he  has  been  eventually  compelled  to 
recognize;  and  ever  and  always  he  re 
plies  that,  in  the  final  issue,  he  is  the 
guardian  of  all  beauty.  His  are  the  im 
perishable  standards,  his  is  the  love  for 
a  majestic  past,  his  is  the  patience  to 
wait  until  the  wheat  has  been  sorted 
from  the  chaff,  and  gathered  into  the 
granaries  of  the  world.  If  he  be  hostile 
to  the  problematic,  which  is  his  weak 
ness,  he  is  passionately  loyal  to  the 
tried  and  proven,  which  is  his  strength. 
He  is  as  necessary  to  human  sanity  as 
the  progressive  is  necessary  to  human 
hope. 

Civilization  and  culture  are  very  old 
and  very  beautiful.  They  imply  refine 
ment  of  humour,  a  disciplined  taste,  sen 
sitiveness  to  noble  impressions,  and  a 
90 


Conservative's  Consolations 

wise  acceptance  of  the  laws  of  evidence. 
These  things  are  not  less  valuable  for 
being  undervalued.  "At  the  present 
time,"  says  the  most  acute  of  American 
critics,  Mr.  Brownell,  "it  is  quite  gen 
erally  imagined  that  we  should  gain 
rather  than  lose  by  having  Raphael 
without  the  Church,  and  Rembrandt 
without  the  Bible.'*  The  same  notion, 
less  clearly  defined,  is  prevalent  con 
cerning  Milton  and  Dante.  We  had 
grown  weary  of  large  and  compelling 
backgrounds  until  the  Great  War  fo- 
cussed  our  emotions.  We  are  impatient 
still  of  large  and  compelling  traditions. 
The  tendency  is  to  localization  and 
analysis. 

The  new  and  facile  experiments  in 
verse,  which  have  some  notable  ex 
ponents,  are  interesting  and  indecisive. 
Midway  between  the  enthusiasm  of  the 
experimenters  (which  is  not  contagious) 
and  the  ribald  gibes  of  the  disaffected 
(which  are  not  convincing)  the  con- 
91 


Points  of  Friction 

servative  critic  practises  that  watchful 
waiting,  so  safe  in  the  world  of  art,  so 
hazardous  in  the  world  of  action.  He 
cannot  do  as  he  has  been  bidden,  and 
judge  the  novel  product  by  its  own 
standards,  for  that  would  be  to  exempt 
it  from  judgment.  Nothing  —  not  even 
a  German  —  can  be  judged  by  his  — 
or  its  —  own  standard.  If  there  is  to  be 
any  standard  at  all,  it  must  be  based  on 
comparison.  Keen  thoughts  and  vivid 
words  have  their  value,  no  matter  in 
what  form  they  are  presented;  but  un 
less  that  form  be  poetical,  the  presenta 
tion  is  not  poetry.  There  is  a  world  of 
truth  in  Mr.  Masters's  brief  and  bitter 
lines: 

44  Beware  of  the  man  who  rises  to  power 
From  one  suspender." 

It  has  the  kind  of  sagacity  which  is  em 
bodied  in  the  old  adage,  "You  cannot 
make  a  silk  purse  out  of  a  sow's  ear," 
and  it  is  as  remote  from  the  require 
ments  of  prosody. 

92 


Conservative's  Consolations 

The  medium  employed  by  Walt 
Whitman,  at  times  rhythmic  and  ca- 
denced,  at  times  ungirt  and  sagging 
loosely,  enabled  him  to  write  passages 
of  sustained  beauty,  passages  grandly 
conceived  and  felicitously  rendered.  It 
also  permitted  him  a  riotous  and  some 
what  monotonous  excess.  Every  word 
misused  revenges  itself  forever  upon  a 
writer's  reputation.  The  medium  em 
ployed  by  the  unshackled  poets  of  to 
day  is  capable  of  vivid  and  accurate 
imagery.  It  has  aroused  —  or  revealed 
—  habits  of  observation.  It  paints  pen- 
pictures  cleverly.  In  the  hands  of 
French,  British,  and  American  experts, 
it  shows  sobriety,  and  a  clear  conscious 
ness  of  purpose.  But  it  is  useless  to 
deny  that  the  inexpert  find  it  perilously 
easy.  The  barriers  which  protect  an  or 
dinary  four-lined  stanza  are  not  hard 
to  scale;  but  they  do  exist,  and  they 
sometimes  bring  the  versifier  to  a  halt. 
Without  them,  nothing  brings  him  to 
93 


Points  of  Friction 

a  halt,  save  the  limits  of  the  space 
allotted  by  grudging  newspapers  and 
periodicals. 

Yet  brevity  is  the  soul  of  song,  no 
less  than  the  soul  of  wit.  Those  lovely 
lyrics,  swift  as  the  note  of  a  bird  on  the 
wing,  imperishable  as  a  jewel,  haunting 
as  unforgotten  melody,  are  the  fruits 
of  artifice  no  less  than  of  inspiration.  In 
eight  short  lines,  Landor  gave  "Rose 
Aylmer"  to  an  entranced  and  forever 
listening  world.  There  is  magic  in  the 
art  that  made  those  eight  lines  final. 
A  writer  of  what  has  been  cynically 
called  "socialized  poetry"  would  have 
spent  the  night  of  "memories  and  sighs" 
in  probing  and  specifying  his  emotions. 

The  conservative's  inheritance  from 
the  radical's  lightly  rejected  yester 
days  gives  him  ground  to  stand  on,  and 
a  simplified  point  of  view.  In  that  very 
engaging  volume,  "The  Education  of 
Henry  Adams, "  theautobiographer  tells 
us  in  one  breath  how  much  he  desires 
94 


Conservative's  Consolations 

change,  and,  in  the  next,  how  much  he 
resents  it.  He  would  like  to  upset  an  al 
ready  upset  world,  but  he  would  also 
like  to  keep  the  Pope  in  the  Vatican, 
and  the  Queen  in  Windsor  Castle.  He 
feels  that  by  right  he  should  have  been 
a  Marxist,  but  the  last  thing  he  wants 
to  see  is  a  transformed  Europe.  The  be 
wildered  reader  might  be  pardoned  for 
losing  himself  in  this  labyrinth  of  uncer 
tainties,  were  it  not  for  an  enlightening 
paragraph  in  which  the  author  expresses 
unqualified  amazement  at  Motley's  keen 
enjoyment  of  London  society. 

"The  men  of  whom  Motley  must  have 
been  thinking  were  such  as  he  might 
meet  at  Lord  Hough  ton's  breakfasts: 
Grote,  Jowett,  Milman,  or  Froude; 
Browning,  Matthew  Arnold,  or  Swin 
burne;  Bishop  Wilberforce,  Venables, 
or  Hayward;  or  perhaps  Gladstone, 
Robert  Lowe,  or  Lord  Granville.  .  .  . 
Within  the  narrow  limits  of  this  class 
the  American  Legation  was  fairly  at 
95 


Points  of  Friction 

home;  possibly  a  score  of  houses,  all  lib 
eral  and  all  literary,  but  perfect  only  in 
the  eyes  of  a  Harvard  College  historian. 
They  could  teach  little  worth  knowing, 
for  their  tastes  were  antiquated,  and 
their  knowledge  was  ignorance  to  the 
next  generation.  What  was  altogether 
fatal  for  future  purpose,  they  were  only 
English." 

Apart  from  the  delightful  conception 
of  the  author  of ' '  Culture  and  Anarchy, ' ' 
and  the  author  of  "Atalanta  in  Caly- 
don,"  as  "only  English,"  the  pleasure  the 
conservative  reader  takes  in  this  per 
emptory  estimate  is  the  pleasure  of  pos 
session.  To  him  belongs  the  ignorance  of 
Jowett  and  Grote,  to  him  the  obsolete 
ness  of  Browning.  From  every  one  of 
these  discarded  luminaries  some  light 
falls  on  his  path.  In  fact,  a  flash  of 
blinding  light  was  vouchsafed  to  Mr. 
Adams,  when  he  and  Swinburne  were 
guests  in  the  house  of  Monckton  Milnes. 
Swinburne  was  passionately  praising 
96 


Conservative's  Consolations 

the  god  of  his  idolatry,  Victor  Hugo; 
and  the  young  American,  who  knew 
little  and  cared  less  about  French  poetry, 
ventured  in  a  half-hearted  fashion  to 
assert  the  counter-claims  of  Alfred  de 
Musset.  Swinburne  listened  impatiently, 
and  brushed  aside  the  comparison  with 
a  trenchant  word:  "De  Musset  did  not 
sustain  himself  on  the  wing." 

If  a  bit  of  flawless  criticism  from  an 
expert's  lips  be  not  educational,  then 
there  is  nothing  to  be  taught  or  learned 
in  the  world.  Of  the  making  of  books 
there  is  no  end;  but  now  as  ever  the 
talker  strikes  the  light,  now  as  ever 
conversation  is  the  appointed  medium 
of  intelligence  and  taste. 

It  is  well  that  the  past  yields  some 
solace  to  the  temperamental  conserva 
tive,  for  the  present  is  his  only  on  terms 
he  cannot  easily  fulfil.  His  reasonable 
doubts  and  his  unreasonable  prejudices 
block  the  path  of  contentment.  He  is 
powerless  to  believe  a  thing  because  it  is 
97 


Points  of  Friction 

an  eminently  desirable  thing  to  believe. 
He  is  powerless  to  deny  the  existence  of 
facts  he  does  not  like.  He  is  powerless  to 
credit  new  systems  with  finality.  The 
sanguine  assurance  that  men  and  na 
tions  can  be  legislated  into  goodness, 
that  pressure  from  without  is  equiva 
lent  to  a  moral  change  within,  needs  a 
strong  backing  of  inexperience.  "The 
will,"  says  Francis  Thompson,  "is  the 
lynch-pin  of  the  faculties."  We  stand  or 
fall  by  its  strength  or  its  infirmity.  Where 
there  is  no  temptation,  there  is  no  vir 
tue.  Parental  legislation  for  the  benefit 
of  the  weak  leaves  them  as  weak  as 
ever,  and  denies  to  the  strong  the  birth 
right  of  independence,  the  hard,  resist 
ant  manliness  with  which  they  work 
out  their  salvation.  They  may  go  to 
heaven  in  leading-strings,  but  they  can 
not  conquer  Apollyon  on  the  way. 

The  well-meant  despotism  of  the  re 
former  accomplishes  some  glittering  re 
sults,  but  it  arrests  the  slow  progress  of 


Conservative's  Consolations 

civilization,  which  cannot  afford  to  be 
despotic.  Mr.  Bagehot,  whose  cynicism 
held  the  wisdom  of  restraint,  main 
tained  that  the  "cake  of  custom "  should 
be  stiff  enough  to  make  change  of  any 
kind  difficult,  but  never  so  stiff  as 
to  make  it  impossible.  The  progress 
achieved  under  these  conditions  would 
be,  he  thought,  both  durable  and  en 
durable.  "Without  a  long-accumulated 
and  inherited  tendency  to  discourage 
originality,  society  would  never  have 
gained  the  cohesion  requisite  for  ef 
fecting  common  action  against  its  ex 
ternal  foes."  Deference  to  usage  is  a 
uniting  and  sustaining  bond.  Nations 
which  reject  it  are  apt  to  get  off  the 
track,  and  have  to  get  back,  or  be  put 
back,  with  difficulty  and  disaster.  They 
do  not  afford  desirable  dwelling-places 
for  thoughtful  human  beings,  but  they 
give  notable  lessons  to  humanity.  In 
novations  to  which  we  are  not  commit 
ted  are  illuminating  things. 
99 


Points  of  Friction 

If  the  principles  of  conservatism  are 
based  on  firm  supports,  on  a  recogni 
tion  of  values,  a  sense  of  measure  and 
proportion,  a  due  regard  for  order,  - 
its  prejudices  are  indefensible.  The 
wise  conservative  does  not  attempt  to 
defend  them;  he  only  clings  to  them 
more  lovingly  under  attack.  He  recog 
nizes  triumphant  science  in  the  tele 
phone  and  the  talking  machine,  and  his 
wish  to  escape  these  benefactions  is  but 
a  humble  confession  of  unworthiness. 
He  would  be  glad  if  scientists,  hitherto 
occupied  with  preserving  and  dissemi 
nating  sound,  would  turn  their  attention 
to  suppressing  it,  would  collect  noise  as 
an  ashman  collects  rubbish,  and  dump 
it  in  some  lonely  place,  thus  preserving 
the  sanity  of  the  world.  He  agrees  with 
Mr.  Edward  Martin  (who  bears  the 
hall-mark  of  the  caste)  that  periodicals 
run  primarily  for  advertisers,  and  sec 
ondarily  for  readers,  are  worthy  of  re 
gard,  and  that  only  the  tyranny  of 

100 


Conservative's  ConsoJafrons 

habit  makes  him  revolt  from  so  nice  an 
adjustment  of  interests.  Why,  after  all, 
should  he  balk  at  pursuing  a  story,  or 
an  article  on  "Ballads  and  Folk-Songs 
of  the  Letts,"  between  columns  of  well- 
illustrated  advertisements?  Why  should 
he  refuse  to  leap  from  chasm  to  chasm, 
from  the  intimacies  of  underwear  to 
electrical  substitutes  for  all  the  arts  of 
living?  There  is  no  hardship  involved 
in  the  chase,  and  the  trail  is  carefully 
blazed.  Yet  the  chances  are  that  he 
abandons  the  Letts,  reminding  himself 
morosely  that  three  years  ago  he  was 
but  dimly  aware  of  their  existence;  and 
their  "rich  vein  of  traditional  imagery," 
to  say  nothing  of  their  early  edition  of 
Luther's  catechism,  fades  from  his  in 
tellectual  horizon. 

If  we  are  too  stiff  to  adjust  ourselves 
to  changed  conditions,  we  are  bound  to 
play  a  losing  game.  Yet  the  moral  ele 
ment  in  taste  survives  all  change,  and 
denies  to  us  a  ready  acquiescence  in 
101 


•Points  of  Friction 

innovations  whose  only  merit  is  their 
practicality.  Through  the  reeling  years 
of  war,  the  standard  set  by  taste  re 
mained  a  test  of  civilization.  In  these 
formidable  years  of  peace,  racked  by 
anxieties  and  shadowed  by  disillusions 
(Franklin's  ironic  witticism  concerning 
the  blessedness  of  peace-makers  was 
never  more  applicable  than  to-day), 
the  austerity  of  taste  preserves  our 
self-respect.  We  are  under  no  individual 
obligation  to  add  to  the  wealth  of  na 
tions.  It  is  sometimes  a  pleasant  duty 
to  resist  the  pervasive  pressure  of  the 
business  world. 

Political  conservatism  may  be  a  lost 
cause  in  modern  democracy;  but  tem 
peramental  conservatism  dates  from 
the  birth  of  man's  reasoning  powers, 
and  will  survive  the  clamour  and  chaos 
of  revolutions.  It  may  rechristen  its 
political  platform,  but  the  animating 
spirit  will  be  unchanged.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  great  conservatives  have  always 
1 02 


Conservative's  Consolations 

been  found  in  the  liberal  ranks,  and 
Tory  Cassandras,  who  called  them 
selves  radicals,  have  prophesied  with 
dismal  exactitude.  It  was  a  clear-eyed, 
clear-voiced  Socialist  who,  eight  years 
before  the  war,  warned  British  Social 
ists  that  they  would  do  well  to  sound 
the  temper  of  German  Socialists  before 
agitating  for  a  reduction  of  the  British 
navy.  M.  Paul  Deschanel  says  of  the 
French  that  they  have  revolutionary 
imaginations  and  conservative  tempera 
ments.  An  English  critic  has  used  nearly 
the  same  terms  in  defining  the  elemental 
principles  of  civilization,  —  conserva 
tism  of  technique  and  spiritual  rest 
lessness.  It  is  the  fate  of  man  to  do  his 
own  thinking,  and  thinking  is  subver 
sive  of  content;  but  a  sane  regard  for 
equilibrium  is  his  inheritance  from  the 
travail  of  centuries.  He  sees  far  who 
looks  both  ways.  He  journeys  far  who 
treads  a  known  track. 

Resistance,  which  is  the  function  of 
103 


Points  of  Friction 

conservatism,  is  essential  to  orderly  ad 
vance.  It  is  a  force  in  the  social  and 
political,  as  well  as  in  the  natural  order. 
A  party  of  progress,  a  party  of  stability, 

—  call  them  by  what  names  we  please, 

—  they  will  play  their  roles  to  the  end. 
The  hopefulness  of  the  reformer  (Savo 
narola's  bonfire  of  vanities  is  an  historic 
precedent  for  Hawthorne's  allegory)  is 
balanced  by  the  patience  of  the  con 
servative,  which  has  survived  the  dis 
appointments  of  time,  and  is  not  yet 
exhausted.  He  at  least  knows  that  "the 
chief  parts  of  human  doom  and  duty 
are  eternal,"  and  that  the  things  which 
can  change  are  not  the  things  essential 
to  the  support  of  his  soul.  We  stand  at 
the  door  of  a  new  day,  and  are  sanguine 
or  affrighted  according  to  our  tempera 
ments;  but  this  day  shall  be  transient 
as  the  days  which  have  preceded  it,  and, 
like   its   predecessors,    shall   plead   for 
understanding  and  pardon  before  the 
bar  of  history. 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

NOW  that  the  Great  War  is  a  thing 
of  the  past,  there  is  no  longer  any 
need  to  be  cheerful.  For  years  a  valor 
ous  gaiety  has  been  the  role  assigned 
us.  For  years  we  struck  a  hopeful  note, 
whether  it  rang  true  or  false.  For  years 
the  plight  of  the  world  was  so  desperate 
that  we  dared  not  look  straight  ahead, 
lest  the  spectre  of  a  triumphant  Ger 
many  smite  us  blind.  Confronted  with 
a  ruthlessness  which  threatened  to  ex 
tinguish  the  liberties  and  decencies  of 
civilization,  we  simply  had  to  cast  about 
us  for  a  wan  smile  to  hide  from  appre 
hensive  eyes  the  trouble  of  our  souls. 

Now  the  beast  of  militarism  has  been 
chained,  and  until  it  is  strong  enough 
to  break  its  fetters  (which  should  be  a 
matter  of  years),  we  can  breathe  freely, 
and  try  and  heal  our  hurt.  True,  there  is 
105 


Points  of  Friction 

trouble  enough  on  every  side  to  stock  a 
dozen  worlds.  The  beauty  of  France  has 
been  unspeakably  defiled.  The  butcher 
ies  in  Belgium  scarred  the  nation's  soul. 
The  flower  of  British  youth  have  per 
ished.  Italy's  gaping  wounds  have  fes 
tered  under  a  grievous  sense  of  wrong. 
Russia  seethes  with  hatred  and  strife. 
In  the  United  States  we  see  on  one  hand 
a  mad  welter  of  lawlessness,  idleness, 
and  greed;  and,  on  the  other,  official 
extravagance,  administrative  weakness, 
a  heavy,  ill-adjusted  burden  of  taxation, 
and  shameless  profiteering.  Our  equi 
librium  is  lost,  and  with  it  our  sense  of 
proportion.  We  are  Lilliput  and  Brob- 
dingnag  jumbled  up  together,  which  is 
worse  than  anything  Gulliver  ever  en 
countered. 

But  this  displacement  of  balance,  this 
unruly  selfishness,  is  but  the  inevitable 
result  of  the  world's  great  upheaval.  It 
represents  the  human  rebound  from 
high  emotions  and  heavy  sacrifices.  The 
1 06 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

emotions  and  the  sacrifices  have  met 
their  reward.  Germany  cannot  —  for 
some  time  to  come  —  spring  at  our 
throat.  If  we  fail  to  readjust  our  indus 
tries  on  a  paying  basis,  we  shall  of  course 
go  under,  and  lose  the  leadership  of  the 
world.  But  we  won't  be  kicked  under  by 
the  Prussian  boot. 

Therefore  cheerfulness  is  no  longer 
obligatory.  We  can  shut  the  door  in  the 
faces  of  its  professional  purveyors  — • 
who  have  been  making  a  good  thing  of 
it  —  and  look  with  restful  seriousness 
upon  the  mutability  of  life.  Our  intelli 
gence,  so  long  insulted  by  the  senti 
mental  inconsistencies  which  are  the 
text  of  the  Gospel  of  Gladness,  can 
assert  its  right  of  rejection.  The  Sun 
shine  School  of  writers  has  done  its 
worst,  and  the  fixed  smile  with  which  it 
regards  the  universe  is  as  offensive  as 
the  fixed  smile  of  chorus  girls  and  col 
lege  presidents,  of  debutantes  and  high 
officials,  who  are  photographed  for  the 
107 


Points  of  Friction 

Sunday  press,   and  who  all   look  like 
advertisements  of  dentifrice. 

Popular  optimism  —  the  kind  which 
is  hawked  about  like  shoe-strings  —  is 
the  apotheosis  of  superficiality.  The  ob 
vious  is  its  support,  the  inane  is  its 
ornament.  Consider  the  mental  attitude 
of  a  writer  who  does  not  hesitate  to  say 
in  a  perfectly  good  periodical,  which 
does  not  hesitate  to  publish  his  words: 
"Nothing  makes  a  man  happier  than  to 
know  that  he  is  of  use  to  his  own  time." 
Only  in  a  sunburst  of  cheerfulness  could 
such  a  naked  truism  be  shamelessly  ex 
posed.  I  can  remember  that,  when  I  was 
a  child,  statements  of  this  order  were 
engraved  in  neat  script  on  the  top  line 
of  our  copy-books.  But  it  was  under 
stood  that  their  value  lay  in  their  chi- 
rography,  in  the  unapproachable  per 
fection  of  every  letter,  not  in  the  mes 
sage  they  conveyed.  Our  infant  minds 
were  never  outraged  by  seeing  them  in 
printed  text.  Those  were  serious  and 
1 08 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

self-respecting  days  when  no  one  sent 
our  mothers  a  calendar  with  three  hun 
dred  and  sixty-five  words  of  cheer,  de 
signed  to  jack  up  the  lowered  morale  of 
the  family.  The  missionary  spirit  was 
at  work  then  as  now;  but  it  mostly 
dropped  tracts  on  our  doorstep,  remind 
ing  us  that  we  might  be  in  hell  before 
to-morrow  morning. 

The  gaiety  of  life  is  a  saving  grace, 
and  high  spirits  are  more  than  the  ap 
panage  of  youth.  They  represent  the 
rebound  of  the  resilient  soul  from  moods 
of  dejection,  and  it  is  their  transient 
character  which  makes  them  so  infec 
tious.  Landor's  line, 

"That  word,  that  sad  word,  Joy," 
is  manifestly  unfair.  Joy  is  a  delightful, 
flashing  little  word,  as  brief  as  is  the 
emotion  it  conveys.  We  all  know  what 
it  means,  but  nobody  dares  to  preach 
it,  as  they  preach  three-syllabled  cheer 
fulness,  and  gladness  which  once  had  a 
heroic  sound,  the  "gladness  that  hath 
109 


Points  of  Friction 

favour  with  God,"  but  which  is  now 
perilously  close  to  slang.  The  early 
Christians,  who  had  on  a  large  scale  the 
courage  of  their  convictions,  found  in 
their  faith  sufficient  warrant  for  content. 
They  seem  to  have  lived  and  died  with 
a  serenity,  a  perfect  good  humour, which 
is  the  highest  result  of  the  best  educa 
tion.  But  when  Mr.  Shaw  attempted  to 
elucidate  in  "Androcles  and  the  Lion" 
this  difficult  and  delicate  conception,  he 
peopled  his  stage  with  Polly  annas,  who 
voiced  their  cheerfulness  so  clamorously 
that  they  made  persecution  pardonable. 
No  public  could  be  expected  to  endure 
such  talk  when  it  had  an  easy  method 
of  getting  rid  of  the  talkers. 

The  leniency  of  the  law  now  leaves  us 
without  escape.  We  cannot  throw  our 
smiling  neighbours  to  the  lions,  and  they 
override  us  in  what  seems  to  me  a  spirit 
of  cowardly  exultation.  Female  optimists 
write  insufferable  papers  on  "Happy 
Hours  for  Old  Ladies,"  and  male  opti- 
no 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

mists  write  delusive  papers  on  "Happi 
ness  as  a  Business  Asset."  Reforming 
optimists  who,  ten  years  ago,  bade  us 
rejoice  over  the  elimination  of  war,  — 
"save  on  the  outskirts  of  civilization," 
now  bid  us  rejoice  over  the  elimina 
tion  of  alcohol,  —  save  on  the  tables  of 
the  rich.  Old-fashioned  optimists,  like 
Mr.  Horace  Fletcher,  put  faith  in  the 
"benevolent  intentions"  of  nature, — 
nature  busy  with  the  scorpion's  tail. 
New-fashioned  optimists,  like  Professor 
Ralph  Barton  Perry  (who  may  not 
know  how  optimistic  he  is),  put  faith  in 
the  mistrust  of  nature  which  has  armed 
the  hands  of  men.  Sentimental  opti 
mists,  the  most  pervasive  of  the  tribe, 
blur  the  fine  outlines  of  life,  to  see  which 
clearly  and  bravely  is  the  imperative 
business  of  man's  soul. 

For  the  world  of  thought  is  not  one 

whit  more  tranquil  than  the  world  of 

action.  The  man  whose  "mind  to  him  a 

kingdom  is"  wears  his  crown  with  as 

in 


Points  of  Friction 

much  uneasiness  as  does  a  reigning 
monarch.  Giordano  Bruno,  who  had 
troubles  of  his  own,  and  who  knew 
by  what  road  they  came,  commended 
ignorance  as  a  safeguard  from  melan 
choly.  If,  disregarding  this  avenue  of 
escape,  we  look  with  understanding, 
and  sometimes  even  with  exhilaration, 
upon  the  portentous  spectacle  of  life, 
if  we  have  tempers  so  flawless  that  we 
can  hold  bad  hands  and  still  enjoy  the 
game,  then,  with  the  sportsman's  relish, 
will  come  the  sportsman's  reward;  a 
reward,  be  it  remembered,  which  is  in 
the  effort  only,  and  has  little  to  do  with 
results. 

"II  faut  chanter!  chanter,  mcme  en  sachant 
Qu'il  existe  cles  chants  qu'on  pr£fere  a  son  chant." 

The  generous  illusions  which  noble 
souls  like  Emerson's  have  cherished  un 
dismayed  are  ill-fitted  for  loose  han 
dling.  Good  may  be  the  final  goal  of  evil, 
but  if  we  regard  evil  with  a  too  sanguine 
eye,  it  is  liable  to  be  thrown  out  of  per- 
112 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

spective.  In  the  spring  of  1916,  when 
the  dark  days  of  the  war  were  upon  us, 
and  the  toll  of  merchant  ships  grew 
heavier  week  by  week  with  Germany's 
mounting  contempt  for  admonitions,  I 
heard  a  beaming  gentleman  point  out  to 
a  large  audience,  which  tried  to  beam 
responsively,  that  the  "wonderful" 
thing  about  the  contest  was  the  unselfish 
energy  it  had  awakened  in  the  breasts 
of  American  women.  He  dwelt  unctu 
ously  upon  their  relief  committees,  upon 
the  excellence  of  their  hospital  supplies, 
upon  their  noble  response  to  the  needs 
of  humanity.  He  repeated  a  great  many 
times  how  good  it  was  for  us  to  do  these 
things.  He  implied,  though  he  did  not 
say  it  in  rude  words,  that  the  agony  of 
Europe  was  nicely  balanced  by  the 
social  regeneration  of  America.  He  was 
a  sentimental  Rochefoucauld,  rejoicing, 
without  a  particle  of  guile,  that  the  mis 
fortunes  of  our  friends  had  given  us 
occasion  to  manifest  our  friendship. 


Points  of  Friction 

It  has  been  often  asserted  that  un 
scrupulous  optimism  is  an  endearing 
trait,  that  the  world  loves  it  even  when 
forced  to  discountenance  it,  and  that 
"radiant"  people  are  personally  and 
perennially  attractive.  Mr.  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  said  something  of  this  sort, 
and  his  authority  is  invoked  by  senti 
mentalists  who  compile  calendars,  and 
birthday  books,  and  texts  to  encumber 
our  walls.  They  fail  to  distinguish  the 
finely  tempered  spirit  which  carried 
Mr.  Stevenson  over  the  stony  places  of 
life,  and  which  was  beautiful  beyond 
measure  (the  stones  being  many  and 
hard),  from  the  inconsequent  cheerful 
ness  which  says  that  stones  are  soft. 
We  cannot  separate  an  author  from  his 
work,  and  nowhere  in  Stevenson's  books 
does  he  guarantee  anything  more  opti 
mistic  than  courage.  The  triumph  of  evil 
in  "Thrawn  Janet,"  the  hopelessness 
of  escape  from  heredity  in  "Olalla," 
the  shut  door  in  "  Markheim,"  the  stern 
114 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

contempt  in  "  A  Lodging  for  the  Night," 
the  inextinguishable  and  unpardonable 
hatreds  in  "The  Master  of  Ballantrae," 
even  the  glorious  contentiousness  of 
* '  Virginibus  Puerisque, ' '  —  where  in 
these  masterful  pages  are  we  invited  to 
smile  at  life?  We  go  spinning  through  it, 
he  admits,  "  like  a  party  for  the  Derby." 
Yet  "  the  whole  way  is  one  wilderness  of 
snares,  and  the  end  of  it,  for  those  who 
fear  the  last  pinch,  is  irrevocable  ruin." 
This  is  a  call  for  courage,  for  the  cour 
age  that  lay  as  deep  as  pain  in  the  souls 
of  Stevenson,  and  Johnson,  and  Lamb. 
The  combination  of  a  sad  heart  and  a 
gay  temper,  which  is  the  most  charming 
and  the  most  lovable  thing  the  world 
has  got  to  show,  gave  to  these  men  their 
hold  upon  the  friends  who  knew  them  in 
life,  and  still  wins  for  them  the  personal 
regard  of  readers.  Lamb,  the  saddest 
and  the  gayest  of  the  three,  cultivated 
sedulously  the  little  arts  of  happiness. 
He  opened  all  the  avenues  of  approach. 


Points  of  Friction 

He  valued  at  their  worth  a  good  play,  a 
good  book,  a  good  talk,  and  a  good  din 
ner.  He  lived  in  days  when  occasional 
drunkenness  failed  to  stagger  human 
ity,  and  when  roast  pig  was  within  the 
income  of  an  East  India  clerk.  He  had  a 
gift,  subtle  rather  than  robust,  for  en 
joyment,  and  a  sincere  accessibility  to 
pain.  His  words  were  unsparing,  his  ac 
tions  kind.  He  binds  us  to  him  by  his 
petulance  as  well  as  by  his  patience,  by 
his  entirely  human  revolt  from  dull 
people  and  tiresome  happenings.  He 
was  not  one  of  those  who 

"lightly  lose 

Their  all,  yet  feel  no  aching  void. 
Should  aught  annoy  them,  they  refuse 
To  be  annoyed." 

On  the  contrary,  the  whimsical  expres 
sion  of  his  repeated  annoyance  is  balm 
to  our  fretted  souls. 

For  the  friend  whom  we  love  is  the 
friend  who  gets  wet  when  he  is  rained 
on,  who  is  candid  enough  to  admit  fail- 
116 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

ure,  and  courageous  enough  to  mock  at 
it.  When  Jane  Austen  wrote  to  her  sister 
that  she  did  not  have  a  very  good  time 
at  a  party,  because  men  were  disposed 
not  to  ask  her  to  dance  until  they  could 
not  help  it,  she  did  more  than  make 
Cassandra  smile ;  she  won  her  way  into 
the  hearts  of  readers  for  whom  that  let 
ter  was  not  meant.  We  know  the  "radi 
ant"  people  to  whom  all  occasions  are 
enjoyable,  who  intimate  —  with  some 
skill,  I  confess  —  that  they  carry  mirth 
and  gaiety  in  their  wake.  They  are 
capable  of  describing  a  Thanksgiving 
family  dinner  as  mirthful  because  they 
were  participants.  Not  content  with  a 
general  profession  of  pleasure  in  liv 
ing,  "which  is  all,"  says  Mr.  Henry 
Adams,  "that  the  highest  rules  of  good 
breeding  should  ask,"  they  insist  upon 
the  delightfulness  of  a  downcast  world, 
and  they  offer  their  personal  sentiments 
as  proof. 

Dr.  Johnson's  sputtering  rage  at  the 
117 


Points  of  Friction 

happy  old  lady  is  the  most  human  thing 
recorded  of  his  large  and  many-sided 
humanity.  A  great  thinker  who  con 
fronted  life  with  courage  and  under 
standing  was  set  at  naught,  and,  to 
speak  truth,  routed,  by  an  unthinking, 
but  extremely  solid,  asseveration.  And 
after  all  the  old  lady  was  not  calling  for 
recruits;  she  was  simply  stating  a  case. 
Miss  Helen  Keller,  in  a  book  called 
"Optimism,"  says  very  plainly  that  if 
she,  a  blind  deaf  mute,  can  be  happy, 
every  one  can  achieve  happiness,  and 
that  it  is  every  one's  duty  to  achieve  it. 
Now  there  is  not  a  decent  man  or  woman 
in  the  country  who  will  not  be  glad  to 
know  that  Miss  Keller  is,  as  she  says 
she  is,  happy;  but  this  circumstance 
does  not  affect  the  conditions  of  life  as 
measured  by  all  who  meet  them.  The 
whole  strength  of  the  preaching  world 
has  gone  into  optimism,  with  the  result 
that  it  has  reached  a  high  place  in  man's 
estimation,  is  always  spoken  of  with 
118 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

respect,  and  not  infrequently  mistaken 
for  a  virtue. 

Are  we  then  so  sunk  in  dejection,  so 
remote  from  the  splendid  and  uncon 
scious  joy  which  the  struggle  for  life 
gave  to  the  centuries  that  are  over? 
Time  was  when  men  needed  the  curb, 
and  not  the  spur,  in  that  valorous  con 
tention.  "How  high  the  sea  of  human 
delight  rose  in  the  Middle  Ages,"  says 
Mr.  Chesterton,  "we  know  only  by  the 
colossal  walls  they  built  to  keep  it 
within  bounds."  Optimism  was  as  super 
fluous  as  meliorism  when  the  world  was 
in  love  with  living,  when  Christianity 
preached  penance  and  atonement  for 
sin,  striving  by  golden  promises  and 
direful  threats  to  wean  man  from  that 
unblessed  passion,  to  turn  the  strong 
tide  of  his  nature  back  from  the  earth 
that  nourished  it.  There  was  never  but 
one  thorough -going  optimist  among  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  and  that  was 
Origen,  who  looked  forward  confidently 
119 


Points  of  Friction 

to  the  final  conversion  of  Satan.  His 
attitude  was  full  of  nobleness  because 
he  had  suffered  grievously  at  the  hea 
then's  hands;  but  not  even  by  the 
alchemy  of  compassion  is  evil  trans- 
mutable  to  good. 

The  Stoics,  who  proposed  that  men 
should  practise  virtue  without  com 
pensation,  were  logically  unassailable, 
but  not  persuasive  to  the  average  mind. 
It  does  not  take  much  perspicuity  to 
distinguish  between  an  agreeable  and  a 
disagreeable  happening,  and  once  the 
difference  is  perceived,  no  argument  can 
make  them  equally  acceptable.  "Play 
ing  at  mummers  is  one  thing,"  says  the 
sapient  tanner  in  Kenneth  Grahame's 
"Headswoman,"  "and  being  executed 
is  another.  Folks  ought  to  keep  them 
separate."  On  the  other  hand,  the  assur 
ance  of  the  Epicureans  that  goodness 
and  temperance  were  of  value  because 
they  conduced  to  content  was  liable  to 
be  set  aside  by  the  man  who  found  him- 

120 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

self  contented  without  them.  "The  poor 
world,  to  do  it  justice,"  says  Gilbert 
Murray,  "has  never  lent  itself  to  any 
such  bare-faced  deception  as  the  opti 
mism  of  the  Stoics" ;  but  neither  are  we 
disposed  to  recognize  enlightened  self- 
interest  as  a  spiritual  agency.  It  may 
perhaps  be  trusted  to  make  a  good  hus 
band  or  a  good  vestryman,  but  not  a 
good  human  being. 

A  highly  rational  optimist,  deter 
mined  to  be  logical  at  any  cost,  observed 
recently  in  a  British  review  that  sym 
pathy  was  an  invasion  of  liberty.  "If 
I  must  sorrow  because  another  is  sor 
rowing,  I  am  a  slave  to  my  feelings,  and 
it  is  best  that  I  ehall  be  slave  to  nothing. 
Perfect  freedom  means  that  I  am  able 
to  follow  my  own  will,  and  my  will  is 
to  be  happy  rather  than  to  be  sad.  I  love 
pleasure  rather  than  pain.  Therefore  if 
I  am  moved  to  sorrow  against  my  will, 
I  am  enslaved  by  my  sympathy." 

This  is  an  impregnable  position.  It  is 

121 


Points  of  Friction 

the  old,  old  philosophy  of  the  cold  heart 
and  the  warm  stomach.  I  do  not  say 
that  it  is  unwise.  I  say  only  that  it  is 
unlikable. 

For  our  quarrel  with  Christian  Sci 
ence  is,  not  that  it  prefers  Mrs.  Eddy  to 
^sculapius,  or  her  practitioners  to  his 
practitioners;  not  that  it  sometimes 
shames  us  by  rising  superbly  above  our 
froward  nerves,  and  on  less  happy  oc 
casions  denies  the  existence  of  a  cold 
which  is  intruding  itself  grossly  upon 
the  senses;  but  that  it  exempts  its  fol 
lowers  from  legitimate  pity  and  grief. 
Only  by  refusing  such  exemption  can 
we  play  our  whole  parts  in  the  world. 
While  there  is  a  wrong  done,  we  must 
admit  some  measure  of  defeat;  while 
there  is  a  pang  suffered,  we  have  no 
right  to  unflawed  serenity.  To  cheat 
ourselves  intellectually  that  we  may 
save  ourselves  spiritually  is  unworthy 
of  the  creature  that  man  is  meant 
to  be. 

122 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

And  to  what  end !  Things  are  as  they 
are,  and  no  amount  of  self-deception 
makes  them  otherwise.  The  friend  who 
is  incapable  of  depression  depresses  us 
as  surely  as  the  friend  who  is  incapable 
of  boredom  bores  us.  Somewhere  in  our 
hearts  is  a  strong,  though  dimly  under 
stood,  desire  to  face  realities,  and  to 
measure  consequences,  to  have  done 
with  the  fatigue  of  pretending.  It  is  not 
optimism  to  enjoy  the  view  when  one  is 
treed  by  a  bull;  it  is  philosophy.  The 
optimist  would  say  that  being  treed  was 
a  valuable  experience.  The  disciple  of 
gladness  would  say  it  was  a  pleasurable 
sensation.  The  Christian  Scientist  would 
say  there  was  no  bull,  though  remain 
ing  —  if  he  were  wise  —  on  the  tree- 
top.  The  philosopher  would  make  the 
best  of  a  bad  job,  and  seek  what  com 
pensation  he  could  find.  He  is  of  a  class 
apart. 

If,  as  scientists  assert,  fear  is  the  note 
which  runs  through  the  universe,  cour- 
123 


Points  of  Friction 

age  is  the  unconquerable  beat  of  man's 
heart.  A  "wise  sad  valour"  won  the 
war  at  a  cost  we  do  well  to  remember; 
and  from  unnumbered  graves  comes  a 
stern  reminder  that  the  world  can  hold 
wrongs  which  call  for  such  a  righting. 
We  for  whom  life  has  been  made,  not 
safe,  but  worth  the  living,  can  now 
afford  "le  bel  serieux"  which  befits  the 
time  and  occasion.  When  preachers 
cease  pointing  out  to  us  inaccessible 
routes  to  happiness,  we  may  stop  the 
chase  long  enough  to  let  her  softly  over 
take  us.  When  the  Gospellers  of  Glad 
ness  free  us  of  their  importunities,  our 
exhausted  spirits  may  yet  revive  to 
secret  hours  of  mirth.  When  we  frankly 
abandon  an  attitude  of  cheerfulness,  our 
Malvolio  smile  may  break  into  sudden 
peals  of  laughter.  What  have  we  gained 
from  the  past  seven  years  if  not  zest  for 
the  difficulties  and  dangers  ahead  of  us? 
What  lesson  have  we  learned  but  in 
trepidity?  The  noble  Greek  lines  upon 
124 


The  Cheerful  Clan 

a  drowned  seaman  sound  in  our  ears, 
and  steady  us  to  action: 

"A  shipwrecked  sailor,  buried  on  this  coast, 

Bids  you  set  sail. 

Full  many  a  gallant  bark,  when  he  was  lost, 
Weathered  the  gale." 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

ALL  the  world  does  not  love  a  lover. 
It  is  a  cultivated  taste,  alien  to  the 
natural  man,  and  unknown  to  child 
hood.  But  all  the  world  does  love  a  sin 
ner,  either  because  he  is  convertible  to  a 
saint,  or  because  a  taste  for  law-break 
ing  is  an  inheritance  from  our  first 
parents,  who  broke  the  one  and  only 
law  imposed  upon  them.  The  little 
children  whom  Fra  Lippo  Lippi  sees 
standing  in  a  "row  of  admiration" 
around  the  murderer  on  the  altar  step 
express  their  innocent  interest  in  crime. 
Bayard,  "sans  peur  et  sans  reproche," 
has  never  stirred  the  heart  of  youth  as 
has  Robin  Hood,  that  bold  outlaw  who 
"beat  and  bound"  unpopular  sheriffs, 
and  "readjusted  the  distribution  of 
property,"  -  delightful  phrase,  as  old 
as  the  world,  and  as  fresh  as  to-morrow 
126 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

morning.  The  terrible  and  undeserved 
epithet,  "blameless,"  has  robbed  great 
Arthur  of  his  just  meed  of  homage.  The 
"Master  Thief"  enjoyed,  and  still  en 
joys,  unmerited  popularity. 

I  sometimes  wonder  what  a  man  con 
scious  of  talent,  like  the  Master  Thief, 
would  have  thought  if  the  simple  crimi- 
nologists  of  his  day  —  who  knew  no  sub 
tler  remedy  than  hanging  —  had  con 
fronted  him  with  clinics,  and  labora 
tories,  and  pamphlets  on  the  "disease 
of  crime."  I  sometimes  wonder  how  his 
able  descendants,  like  the  humorous 
rogues  who  stole  the  gold  cup  at  As 
cot;  or  the  wag  who  slipped  the  stolen 
purses  (emptied  of  their  contents)  into 
the  pocket  of  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln; 
or  the  redoubtable  Raymond  —  alias 
Wirth  —  who  stole  a  shipping  of  Kim- 
berley  diamonds  and  a  Gainsborough 
portrait,  feel  about  their  pathological 
needs.  "The  criminal  is  a  sick  man,  the 
prison  is  his  hospital,  and  the  judge  who 
127 


Points  of  Friction 

sentenced  him  is  his  physician,"  said 
Dr.  Vaughan,deanof  the  Medical  School 
in  the  University  of  Michigan.  "Does  a 
hunting  man  give  up  riding  to  hounds 
because  he  has  had  a  fall?"  asked  a 
stalwart  "invalid,"  serving  a  sentence 
for  burglary,  of  the  chaplain  who  had 
urged  upon  him  the  security  of  an  honest 
life. 

It  is  always  animating  to  hear  the 
convict's  point  of  view.  In  fact,  every 
thing  appertaining  to  criminology  in 
terests  us  as  deeply  as  everything 
appertaining  to  pauperism  bores  and  re 
pels  us.  Some  years  ago  the  "  Nineteenth 
Century"  offered  its  pages  as  a  debat- 
ing-ground  for  this  absorbing  theme. 
Arguments  were  presented  by  Sir  Alfred 
Wills,  a  judge  of  twenty-one  years' 
standing,  Sir  Robert  Anderson,  author 
of  "Criminals  and  Crime,"  and  Mr. 
H.  J.  B.  Montgomery,  an  ex-convict  and 
a  fluent  writer,  albeit  somewhat  super 
cilious  as  befitted  his  estate.  He  took  the 
128 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

bold  and  popular  stand  that  society  has 
created  the  criminal  class,  that  its  mem 
bers  detest  the  crimes  they  commit  with 
such  apparent  zest,  and  that  they 
should  be  "tended  and  cheered'*  in 
stead  of  subjected  to  the  "extreme 
stupidity"  of  prison  life.  Indeterminate 
sentences  which  carry  with  them  an  ele 
ment  of  hope,  and  which  should  be  an 
incentive  to  reform  because  they  imply 
its  possibility,  he  condemned  without 
reserve  as  putting  a  premium  on  hypoc 
risy.  But  the  point  which  of  all  others 
aroused  his  just  resentment  was  the  de 
mand  made  by  the  two  jurists  for  resti 
tution. 

This  is  the  crux  of  a  situation  which 
in  the  moral  law  is  simplicity  itself ;  but 
which  the  evasiveness  of  the  civil  law 
has  unduly  complicated,  and  which  the 
random  humanitarianism  of  our  day 
has  buried  out  of  sight.  Every  crime  is 
an  offence  against  the  State.  It  is  also  in 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  an 
129 


Points  of  Friction 

offence  against  a  fellow-creature,  which 
fellow-creature  is  called  a  victim,  and 
interests  nobody.  Sir  Alfred  Wills  and 
Sir  Robert  Anderson  both  held  that 
thieves,  big  thieves  especially,  should 
be  compelled  to  say  what  disposition 
had  been  made  of  stolen  property,  and 
that  they  should  be  imprisoned  for  life 
if  they  refused.  Anderson  was  firm  in 
his  insistence  that  the  act  of  thieving 
alienates  such  property  actually,  but  not 
legally  or  morally,  from  its  owner,  and 
that  serving  a  sentence  for  robbery  does 
not  clear  the  robber's  title  to  the  goods. 
He  also  pointed  out  that  the  most  heart 
less  thefts  are  committed  daily  at  the 
expense  of  people  in  decent  but  narrow 
circumstances,  because  such  people  are 
compelled  to  leave  their  homes  un 
protected.  He  instanced  the  case  of  one 
woman  robbed  of  her  scanty  savings, 
and  of  another  who  lost  her  dead  soldier 
husband's  medals,  and  the  few  poor 
cherished  trinkets  he  had  given  her. 
130 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

In  the  matter  of  restitution,  Mr. 
Montgomery  stood  fairly  and  squarely 
for  the  felon's  rights.  "The  law, "he  said, 
"has  nothing  to  do,  and  ought  to  have 
nothing  to  do,  with  the  disposal  of  the 
booty";  and  he  was  happy  in  the  con 
viction  that  it  would  never  go  so  far  as 
to  deprive  the  thief  of  the  reward  of  his 
labour,  of  the  money  »•  stolen  by  the 
sweat  of  his  brow.  As  for  staying  in  jail 
until  such  restitution  was  made,  that 
was  as  ridiculous  as  the  suggestion 
sometimes  offered  that  the  convict's 
wages  should  be  paid  over  to  the  man 
he  has  robbed.  Nobody  cares  about  a 
man  who  has  been  robbed.  The  interest 
felt  in  the  criminal  extends  itself  occa 
sionally  to  the  criminal's  family,  but 
never  to  the  family  he  has  wronged.  In 
the  United  States  where  robbery  is  the 
order  of  the  day,  there  is  n't  sympathy 
enough  to  go  'round  among  the  many 
who  play  a  losing  game.  Chicago  alone 
boasts  a  record  of  one  hundred  and 


Points  of  Friction 

seventy-five  hold-ups  in  two  nights,  an 
amazing  tribute  to  industry  and  zeal. 
Many  of  the  victims  were  stripped  of 
their  coats  as  well  as  of  their  valuables, 
there  being  plenty  of  time,  and  no  need 
on  the  thieves'  part  for  hurry  or  dis 
order.  The  Chicago  Crimes  Commission 
put  the  case  with  commendable  brevity 
when  it  said,  "Crime  is  a  business  here." 
An  interesting  circumstance  recorded 
in  Anderson's  volume  is  the  reluctance 
of  professional  burglars  to  ply  their 
craft  on  very  cold  and  stormy  nights. 
It  would  seem  as  though  bad  weather 
might  be  trusted  to  stand  their  friend; 
but  the  burglar,  a  luxury-loving  person, 
dislikes  being  drenched  or  frozen  as 
much  as  does  his  honest  neighbour. 
Happily  for  his  comfort  and  for  his 
health,  a  high-speed  motor  now  enables 
him  to  work  on  sunny  days  at  noon.  It 
is  pleasant  to  reflect  that  the  experts 
who  robbed  three  Philadelphia  jewellers 
at  an  hour  when  the  shops  were  full  of 
132 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

customers,  and  the  streets  were  full  of 
pedestrians,  ran  no  risk  from  exposure. 
They  may  have  been  sick  men  from  the 
psychologist's  point  of  view,  but  they 
were  as  safe  from  bronchitis  as  they 
were  from  the  Philadelphia  police. 

It  is  an  age  of  specialism,  and  the 
criminal,  like  the  scientist,  has  special 
ized.  Stealing  Liberty  Bonds  is  a  field  full 
of  promise  for  youth.  Apparently  noth 
ing  can  shake  the  confidence  of  brokers 
in  the  messengers  who  disappear  with 
one  lot  of  bonds,  only  to  be  released  on  a 
suspended  sentence,  and  speedily  en 
trusted  with  a  second.  The  term  "juve 
nile  delinquency"  has  been  stretched 
to  cover  every  offence  from  murder 
to  missing  school.  A  fourteen-year-old 
girl  who  poisoned  a  fourteen-month-old 
baby  in  Brooklyn,  in  the  summer  of  1919, 
and  who  was  tried  in  the  Children's  Court, 
was  found  guilty  of  juvenile  delinquency, 
and  committed  to  a  home  for  delinquent 
girls.  It  is  hard  to  say  what  else  could 
133 


Points  of  Friction 

have  been  done  with  a  murderess  of 
such  tender  years;  but  the  New  York 
authorities  should  see  to  it  that  Solomon 
Kramer  is  the  last  baby  whom  Frances 
Sulinski  kills.  She  poisoned  this  one 
with  the  single  purpose  of  implicating 
in  the  crime  a  woman  of  seventy  with 
whom  she  had  quarrelled.  The  poor  in 
fant  lingered  in  pain  twenty-four  hours 
before  released  by  death.  It  is  not  easy 
to  throw  a  kindly  light  upon  the  deed; 
and  while  a  baby's  life  is  of  small  value 
to  the  State  ("as  well  be  drowned  as 
grow  up  a  tinker,"  said  Sir  Walter 
Scott),  civilization  means  that  it  has  a 
right  to  protection.  The  law  exists,  not 
for  the  punishment  of  the  offender,  and 
not  for  his  reformation,  but  that  the 
public  may  be  safe  from  his  hands. 

A  robust  sense  of  humour  might  help 
to  straighten  out  the  tangles  which  have 
deranged  the  simple  processes  of  juris 
diction.  When  the  court  rendered  a 
decision  freeing  the  prison  authorities 
134 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

of  Tacoma  from  all  responsibility  in  the 
event  of  a  hunger  strike,  a  light  dawned 
on  that  stricken  town.  The  I.W.W., 
who  had  refused  to  eat  because  they 
objected  to  being  detained  in  the  county, 
instead  of  in  the  city,  jail,  were  accorded 
liberty  to  follow  their  desires.  A  threat 
which  for  years  had  sufficed  to  throw 
British  and  American  prisons  into  con 
sternation  was  suddenly  found  to  be 
harmless  to  all  but  the  threateners. 
What  really  agitated  the  citizens  of 
Tacoma  just  then  was,  not  so  much 
whether  demagogues  would  consent  to 
eat  the  food  provided  for  them,  as 
whether  honest  men  could  afford  food 
to  eat. 

A  comic  opera  might  be  staged  with 
Ellis  Island  as  a  mise  en  scene.  The 
seventy- three  "reds,"  detained  on  that 
asylum  as  undesirables,  who  sent  an 
"ultimatum,"  modelled  on  the  Berlin 
pattern,  to  the  Congressional  Commit 
tee,  would  have  charmed  Gilbert  and 
135 


Points  of  Friction 

inspired  Sullivan.  The  solemnity  with 
which  they  notified  the  indifferent  Con 
gressmen  that  at  half-past  eight  o  'clock, 
Tuesday  morning,  November  25th, 
1919,  they  would  declare  a  hunger 
strike,  the  consequences  of  which  "shall 
fall  upon  the  head  of  the  administration 
of  the  island,"  was  surpassed  by  the 
calmness  with  which  they  gave  warning 
that  they  would  no  longer  attend  the 
hearings  of  the  committee.  Like  the 
heroine  of  Mr.  Davidson's  ballad,  who 
told  the  Devil  she  would  not  stay  in 
hell,  these  gentlemen  registered  them 
selves  as  outside  the  pale  of  coercion. 
They  seemed  to  think  that  by  refusing 
to  eat,  they  could  bend  the  law  to  their 
will,  and  that  by  refusing  to  have  their 
cases  heard,  they  could  stop  the  slow 
process  of  deportation. 

It  is  painful  to  record  this  lack  of 

healthy  humour  on  the  part  of  political 

offenders.  Ordinary  criminals  are  as  a 

rule  neat  hands  at  a  joke,  a  practical 

136 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

joke  especially,  and  convicts  respond 
alacritously  to  all  intelligent  efforts 
to  amuse  them.  Comedians,  who  from 
time  to  time  have  offered  their  services 
to  relieve  the  sad  monotony  of  prison 
life,  have  found  their  audiences  alert  and 
responsive.  Not  a  joke  is  lost,  not  a  song 
or  a  skit  but  wins  its  way  to  favour.  It  is 
this  engaging  receptiveness  which  has 
made  our  captive  thieves  and  cut 
throats  so  dear  to  the  public  heart. 
They  dilate  with  correct  emotions  when 
they  hear  good  music;  and,  in  the  dearth 
of  other  diversions,  they  can  produce 
very  creditable  entertainments  of  their 
own.  The  great  Sing  Sing  pageant  in 
honour  of  Warden  Osborne  was  full  of 
fun  and  fancy.  It  would  have  done 
credit  to  the  dramatic  talent  of  any 
college  in  the  land.  No  wonder  that  we 
detect  a  certain  ostentation  in  the 
claims  made  by  honest  men  to  familiar 
ity  with  rogues.  The  Honourable  T.  P. 
O  'Connor  published  a  few  years  ago  a 
137 


Points  of  Friction 

series  of  papers  with  the  arrogant  title, 
"Criminals  I  Have  Known."  Could  he 
have  attracted  readers  by  boasting  the 
acquaintanceship  of  any  other  class  of 
fellow-creatures  ? 

The  sourness  incidental  to  a  grievance 
deprives  the  political  offender  of  this 
winning  vivacity.  He  is  lamentably 
high-flown  in  his  language,  and  he  has 
no  sense  of  the  ridiculous.  The  Sinn 
Feiners  who  wrecked  the  office  of  a 
Dublin  newspaper  because  it  had  al 
luded  to  one  of  the  men  who  tried  to  kill 
Lord  French  as  a  " would-be  assassin," 
should  expend  some  of  the  money  re 
ceived  from  the  United  States  (in  return 
for  stoning  our  sailors  in  Cork  and 
Queenstown)  in  the  purchase  of  a  dic 
tionary.  " Assassin"  is  as  good  a  word 
as  "murderer"  any  day  of  the  week, 
and  a  "would-be  assassin"  is  no  other 
than  a  "would-be  murderer."  The  Sinn 
Feiners  explained  in  a  letter  to  the  edi 
tor  that  the  calumniated  man  was  really 

138 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

a  "  high-souled  youth,"  but  this  goes 
without  the  saying.  All  political  offend 
ers  are  high-souled  youths.  It  is  their 
sub-title,  eligible  in  oratory  and  obitu 
ary  notices,  but  not  in  the  simple  lan 
guage  of  the  press. 

Mr.  W.  C.  Brownell  alludes  casually 
to  the  social  sentiment  which  instinc 
tively  prefers  the  criminal  to  the  police ; 
but  he  declines  to  analyze  its  rationale. 
Perhaps,  as  I  have  already  hinted,  we 
may  inherit  it  from  our  father,  Adam, 
who  could  have  felt  no  great  kindness 
for  Saint  Michael,  the  first  upholder  of 
the  given  law.  Justice  is  an  unaccom 
modating,  unappealing  virtue.  Deep  in 
our  hearts  is  a  distaste  for  its  rulings, 
and  a  distrust  of  the  fallible  creatures 
who  administer  it.  Mr.  Howells,  writing 
ten  years  ago  in  the  "North  American," 
condemned  without  reserve  the  author 
ity  which,  however  assailable,  is  our 
only  bulwark  against  anarchy.  "The 
State,"  he  said,  "is  a  collective  despot, 
139 


Points  of  Friction 

mostly  inexorable,  always  irresponsible, 
and  entirely  inaccessible  to  the  personal 
appeals  which  have  sometimes  moved 
the  obsolete  tyrant  to  pity.  In  its  selfish 
ness  and  meanness  it  is  largely  the  legis 
lated  and  organized  ideal  of  the  lowest 
and  stupidest  of  its  citizens,  whose  daily 
life  is  nearest  the  level  of  barbarism." 

I  am  not  without  hope  that  the  events 
of  the  past  ten  years  modified  Mr. 
Howells's  point  of  view.  If  the  German 
State  revealed  itself  as  something  peril 
ously  close  to  barbarism,  the  Allied 
States  presented  a  superb  concentration 
of  their  peoples'  unfaltering  purpose. 
That  the  world  was  saved  from  degra 
dation  too  deep  to  be  measured  was  due 
to  individual  heroism,  animated,  up 
held,  and  focused  by  the  State.  Though 
temperamentally  conservative,  I  feel  no 
shadow  of  regret  for  the  "obsolete"  and 
very  picturesque  tyrant  who  softened 
or  hardened  by  caprice.  I  would  rather 
trust  our  stupid  and  venal  authorities, 
140 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

because,  while  each  member  of  a  legis 
lative  body  is  kind  to  his  own  deficien 
cies,  he  is  hard  on  his  neighbour's.  Col 
lective  criticism  is  a  fair  antidote  for 
collective  despotism,  and  robs  it  of  its 
terrors. 

If  we  were  less  incorrigibly  sentimen 
tal,  we  should  be  more  nobly  kind.  Sen- 
timentalism  is,  and  has  always  been, 
virgin  of  standards.  It  is,  and  it  has 
always  been,  insensible  to  facts.  The 
moralists  who,  in  the  first  years  of  the 
war,  protested  against  American  muni 
tions  because  they  were  fresh -made  for 
purposes  of  destruction,  would  have 
flung  the  victory  into  Germany's  hands 
because  her  vast  stores  of  munitions 
had  been  prepared  in  times  of  peace. 
When  the  news  of  the  Belgian  campaign 
sickened  the  heart  of  humanity,  more 
than  one  voice  was  raised  to  say  that 
England  had,  by  her  treatment  of  mili 
tant  suffragists  (a  treatment  so  feeble, 
so  wavering,  so  irascible,  and  so  soft- 
141 


Points  of  Friction 

hearted  that  it  would  not  have  crushed 
a  rebellious  snail),  forfeited  her  right  to 
protest  against  the  dishonouring  of  Bel 
gian  women.  The  moral  confusion  which 
follows  mental  confusion  with  a  sure 
and  steady  step  is  equally  dangerous 
and  distasteful.  It  denies  our  integrity, 
and  it  makes  a  mock  of  our  understand 
ing. 

An  irritated  Englishman,  who  must 
have  come  into  close  quarters  with 
British  pacifists,  —  the  least  lovely  of 
their  species, — has  protested  in  "Black- 
wood's  Magazine"  that  the  one  thing 
dearer  than  the  criminal  to  the  heart  of 
the  humanitarian  is  the  enemy  of  his 
country,  whose  offences  he  condones, 
and  whose  punishment  he  sincerely 
pities.  Thus  it  happened  that  British 
women  joined  American  women  in  pro 
testing  against  the  return  of  the  cattle 
stolen  during  the  last  months  of  the  war 
from  northern  France.  They  said  - 
what  was  undoubtedly  true  that 
142 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

German  children  needed  the  milk. 
French  children  also  needed  the  milk 
(witness  the  death-rates  from  tubercu 
losis  in  and  about  Lille),  but  this  con 
cerned  them  less.  The  herds  belonged  to 
France,  and  their  sympathy  went  out 
to  the  raiders  rather  than  to  the  raided. 
In  fact  all  pacifists  seem  disposed 
to  look  benignly  upon  the  "  noble  old 
piracy  game."  The  Honourable  Ber- 
trand  Russell,  whose  annoyance  at 
England's  going  to  war  deepened  into 
resentment  at  her  winning  it  (a  consum 
mation  which,  to  speak  truth,  he  did  his 
best  to  avert),  expressed  regret  that  the 
sufferings  of  Belgium  should  have  been 
mistakenly  attributed  to  Germany.  Not 
Berlin,  he  said,  but  war  must  be  held 
to  blame;  and  if  war  were  a  natural 
phenomenon,  like  an  earth  quake  or 
a  thunderstorm,  he  would  have  been 
right.  The  original  Attila  was  not  dis 
pleased  to  be  called  the  "Scourge  of 
God,"  and  pious  Christians  of  the  fifth 
143 


Points  of  Friction 

century  acquiesced  in  this  shifting  oi 
liability.  They  said,  and  they  probabl} 
believed,  that  Heaven  had  chosen  c 
barbarian  to  punish  them  for  their  sins 
To-day  we  are  less  at  home  in  Zion,  and 
more  insistent  upon  international  law, 
The  sternest  duty  of  civilization  is  the 
assigning  of  responsibility  for  private 
and  for  public  crimes  as  the  rules  ol 
evidence  direct. 

In  the  Christmas  issue  of  the  "Atlan 
tic  Monthly,"  1919,  another  English 
man  of  letters,  Mr.  Glutton-Brock, 
preached  a  sermon  to  Americans  (we 
get  a  deal  of  instruction  from  our  neigh 
bours),  the  burden  of  which  was  the 
paramount  duty  of  forgiveness.  Natu 
rally  he  illustrated  his  theme  with  an 
appeal  for  Germany,  because  there  is 
so  much  to  be  forgiven  her.  That  he 
made  no  distinction  between  the  inju 
ries  which  a  citizen  of  Lille  or  Louvain, 
and  the  injuries  which  a  reader  of  the 
"Atlantic  Monthly"  has  to  forgive,  was 
144 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

eminently  right,  forgiveness  being  due 
for  the  greatest  as  well  as  for  the  least 
of  offences.  The  Frenchman  or  the 
Belgian  who  forgives  "from  his  heart" 
reaches  a  higher  standard  than  we  do; 
but  the  ethics  of  Christianity  bind  him 
to  that  standard.  It  is  his  supreme  spirit 
ual  test. 

What  was  less  endearing  in  Mr. 
Glutton-Brock's  sermon  was  the  play 
ful  manner  in  which  he  made  light  of 
wrongs  which,  to  say  the  least,  were  not 
matters  for  sport.  We  were  called  on  to 
pardon,  "not  as  an  act  of  virtue,  but  in 
good-humour,  because  we  are  all  ab 
surd,  and  all  need  forgiveness.  .  .  .  We 
all  fail,  and  we  have  no  right  to  say  that 
another  man's,  or  another  nation's, 
failure  is  worse  than  our  own.  .  .  .  We 
must  govern  our  behaviour  to  each 
other  by  the  axiom  that  no  man  is  to  be 
judged  by  his  past" 

These  sentences  aptly  illustrate  my 
contention  that  the  sentimentalist  is  as 


Points  of  Friction 

unconcerned  with  standards  as  with 
facts.  "Absurd"  is  not  the  word  to 
apply  to  Germany's  campaign  in  France 
and  Flanders.  A  man  whose  home  has 
been  burned  and  whose  wife  has  been 
butchered  cannot  be  expected  to  regard 
the  incident  as  an  absurdity,  or  to  recall 
it  with  good-humour.  The  sight  of  a 
child  bayoneted  on  the  roadside  (five 
wounds  in  one  poor  little  body  picked 
up  near  Namur)  arouses  something  deep 
and  terrible  in  the  human  heart.  To  say 
that  one  man's  failure  is  no  worse  than 
another  man's  failure,  that  one  nation's 
failure  is  no  worse  than  another  nation's 
failure,  is  to  deny  any  vital  distinction 
between  degrees  of  right  and  wrong. 
It  is  to  place  the  German  Kaiser  by  the 
side  of  Belgium's  King,  and  George 
Washington  by  the  side  of  George  the 
Third. 

And  by  what  shall  men  be  judged,  if 
not  by  their  past?  What  other  evidence 
can  we  seek?  What  other  test  can  we 
146 


The  Beloved  Sinner 

apply?  A  man  who  has  run  away  with 
his  neighbour's  wife  may  not  care  to 
repeat  the  offence;  he  may  be  cured  for 
ever  of  this  particular  form  of  covetous- 
ness;  but  he  is  not  welcomed  in  sedately 
conducted  households.  A  defaulter  may 
be  converted  to  the  belief  that  honesty 
is  the  best  policy ;  but  few  there  are  who 
will  entrust  him  with  funds,  and  fewer 
still  who  will  receive  him  as  a  gentle 
man.  If  such  behaviour  is,  as  Mr.  Clut- 
ton-Brock  authoritatively  asserts,  op 
posed  to  "a  Christian  technique,"  it 
defines  the  value  of  facts,  and  it  holds 
upright  the  standard  of  honour. 

The  well-meaning  ladies  and  gentle 
men  who  flood  society  with  appeals  to 
"open  the  prison  door,"  and  let  our 
good-will  shine  as  a  star  upon  political 
prisoners,  seem  curiously  indifferent  as 
to  what  the  liberated  ones  will  do  with 
their  liberty.  There  are  few  of  us  so  base 
as  to  desire  to  deprive  our  fellow- 
creatures  of  sunlight  and  the  open  road. 
147 


Points  of  Friction 

There  are  not  many  of  us  so  unpractical 
as  to  want  to  keep  them  a  burden  upon 
the  State,  if  we  have  any  assurance  that 
they  wrill  not  be  a  menace  to  the  State 
when  released.  Sufficiency,  security,  and 
freedom  have  been  denned  as  the  pre 
rogatives  of  civilized  man.  The  cry  of 
the  revolutionist  for  freedom  is  met  by 
the  call  of  sober  citizens  for  security. 
Sympathy  for  the  lawless  (the  beloved 
sinner)  is  not  warranted  in  denying 
equity  to  the  law-abiding,  who  have  a 
right  to  protection  from  the  Republic 
which  they  voluntarily  serve  and  obey. 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

WHEN  Miss  Amy  Lowell,  in  her 
essay  on  fimile  Verhaeren,  says 
that  the  influence  of  Zola  on  the  younger 
writers  of  France  and  Belgium  was 
necessary  "to  down  the  long  set  of  sen 
timental  hypocrisies  known  in  England 
as  'Victorian,'"  she  repeats  a  formula 
which  has  been  in  popular  use  for  many 
years,  and  to  which  we  attach  no  very 
exact  significance.  "Early- Victorian," 
"mid-Victorian,"  we  use  the  phrases 
glibly,  and  without  being  aware  that  the 
mental  attitude  to  which  we  refer  is 
sometimes  not  Victorian  at  all,  but 
Georgian.  Take,  for  example,  that  fairly 
famous  sentiment  about  the  British 
navy  being  "if  possible,  more  distin 
guished  in  its  domestic  virtues  than  in 
its  national  importance."  Nothing  more 
oppressively  smug  was  ever  uttered  in 
149 


Points  of  Friction 

the  reign  of  the  virtuous  Queen;  yet 
it  was  written  by  the  most  humorous 
and  most  pitiless  of  Georgian  novelists, 
and  it  expressed  the  conviction  of  her 
soul. 

When  we  permit  ourselves  to  sneer  at 
Victorian  hypocrisies,  we  allude,  as  a 
rule,  to  the  superficial  observance  of 
religious  practices,  and  to  the  artificial 
reticence  concerning  illicit  sexual  rela 
tions.  The  former  affected  life  more  than 
it  did  literature;  the  latter  affected  liter 
ature  more  than  it  did  life.  A  resolute 
silence  is  apt  to  imply  or  involve  an 
equally  resolute  denial ;  and  there  came  a 
time  when  certain  plain  truths  were 
denied  because  there  was  no  other  way 
of  keeping  them  out  of  sight.  Nov 
elists  and  poets  conformed  to  a  stand 
ard  which  was  set  by  the  taste  of  their 
day.  So  profoundly  was  the  great  Vic 
torian  laureate  influenced  by  this  taste 
that  he  grew  reluctant  to  accept  those 
simple  old  English  stories,  those  charm- 
150 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

ing  old  English  traditions,  the  propriety 
or  impropriety  of  which  had  never  been 
a  matter  for  concern.  His  "fair  Rosa 
mond"  believes  herself  a  wedded  wife, 
and  so  escapes  culpability.  His  "Maid 
Marian"  wanders  through  Sherwood 
Forest  under  the  respectable  chaperon- 
age  of  her  father,  and  will  not  permit  to 
Robin  Hood  the  harmless  liberties  com 
mon  among  betrothed  lovers. 

"Robin,  I  will  not  kiss  thee, 
For  that  belongs  to  marriage;  but  I  hold  thee 
The  husband  of  my  heart;  the  noblest  light 
That  ever  flashed  across  my  life,  and  I 
Embrace  thee  with  the  kisses  of  the  soul. 
Robin:  I  thank  thee." 

It  is  a  bit  frigid  and  a  bit  stilted  for 
the  merry  outlaws.  "If  love  were  all," 
we  might  admit  that  conventionalism 
had  chilled  the  laureate's  pen;  but,  hap 
pily  for  the  great  adventures  we  call  life 
and  death,  love  is  not  all.  The  world 
swings  on  its  way,  peopled  by  othei 
-men  than  lovers;  and  it  is  to  Tennyson 


Points  of  Friction 

we  owe  the  most  splendid  denial  of 
domesticity  —  and  duty  —  that  was 
ever  made  deathless  by  verse.  With 
what  unequalled  ardour  his  Ulysses 
abandons  home  and  country,  the  faith 
ful,  but  ageing,  Penelope,  the  devoted, 
but  dull,  Telemachus,  and  the  trouble 
some  business  of  law-making!  He  does 
not  covet  safety.  He  does  not  enjoy  the 
tranquil  reward  of  his  labours,  nor  the 
tranquil  discharge  of  his  obligations. 
He  will  drink  life  to  the  lees.  He  will  seek 
the  still  untravelled  world,  and  take 
what  buffets  fortune  sends  him. 

"For  my  purpose  holds 
To  sail  beyond  the  sunset,  and  the  baths 
Of  all  the  western  stars,  until  I  die. 
It  may  be  that  the  gulfs  will  wash  us  down; 
It  may  be  we  shall  touch  the  Happy  Isles, 
And  see  the  great  Achilles  whom  we  knew." 

Poor  Penelope!  What  chance  has  she 

against  such  glad  decision,  such  golden 

dreams!  It  is  plain  that  the  Ithacan 

navy  was  less  distinguished  than  the 

152 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

British  navy  for  the  development  of 
domestic  virtues.  Until  such  time  as 
Germany  fulfils  her  threat,  and  drives 
the  "bastard  tongue  of  canting  island 
pirates"  from  its  hold  on  the  civilized 
world,  Tennyson's  Ulysses  will  survive 
as  the  embodiment  of  the  adventurous 
spirit  which  brooks  no  restraint,  and 
heeds  no  liability. 

The  great  Victorian  novelists  were 
well  aware  that,  albeit  the  average  man 
does  his  share  of  love-making,  he  neither 
lives  nor  dies  for  love.  Mr.  Edmund 
Gosse,  reared  in  the  strictest  sect  of 
Plymouth  Brethren,  and  professing  re 
ligion  at  ten,  was  nevertheless  permitted 
by  his  father  to  read  the  novels  of  Dick 
ens,  because  they  dealt  with  the  pas 
sion  of  love  in  a  humorous  manner. 
More  often  they  deal  with  it  in  a  purely 
perfunctory  manner,  recognizing  it  as 
a  prelude  to  marriage,  and  as  something 
to  which  the  novelist  must  not  forget  to 
make  an  occasional  reference.  Nicholas 
153 


Points  of  Friction 

Nickleby  is  a  young  man  and  a  hero. 
Consequently  an  assortment  of  female 
virtues  and  of  female  charms  is  labelled, 
docketed,  provided  with  ringlets  and  a 
capacity  for  appropriate  swooning,  — • 
and  behold,  Nicholas  has  a  wife.  Kate 
Nickleby's  husband  is  even  more  sketch  - 
ily  outlined.  He  has  a  name,  and  —  we 
are  told  —  an  impetuous  and  generous 
disposition.  He  makes  his  appearance 
when  a  suitor  is  needed,  stands  up  to 
be  married  when  a  husband  is  called 
for,  and  that  is  all  there  is  of  him.  But 
what  do  these  puppets  matter  in  a  book 
which  gives  us  Mrs.  Nickleby,  Vincent 
Crummies,  Fanny  Squeers,  and  the 
ever-beloved  Kenwigses.  It  took  a  great 
genius  to  enliven  the  hideous  picture  of 
Dotheboys  Hall  with  the  appropriate 
and  immortal  Fanny,  whom  we  could 
never  have  borne  to  lose.  It  took  a  great 
genius  to  evolve  from  nothingness  the 
name  "  Morleena  Ken  wigs."  So  perfect 
a  result,  achieved  from  a  mere  combi- 
154 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

nation  of  letters,  confers  distinction  on 
the  English  alphabet. 

The  charge  of  conventionalism  brought 
against  Thackeray  and  Trollope  has 
more  substance,  because  these  novel 
ists  essayed  to  portray  life  soberly  and 
veraciously.  "Trollope,"  says  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen,  "was  in  the  awkward  position 
of  a  realist,  bound  to  ignore  realities." 
Thackeray  was  restrained,  partly  by 
the  sensitive  propriety  of  British  read 
ers  who  winced  at  the  frank  admission 
of  sexual  infirmities,  and  partly  by  the 
quality  of  his  own  taste.  In  deference 
to  the  public,  he  forbore  to  make  Arthur 
Pendennis  the  lover  of  Fanny  Bolton; 
and  when  we  remember  the  gallant  part 
that  Fanny  plays  when  safely  settled 
at  Clavering,  her  loyalty  to  i*her  old 
friend,  Bows,  and  her  dexterity  in 
serving  him,  we  are  glad  she  went  un- 
smirched  into  that  sheltered  port. 

The  restrictions  so  cheerfully  accepted 
by  Thackeray,  and  his  reticence  — 
155 


Points  of  Friction 

which  is  merely  the  reticence  observed 
by  every  gentleman  of  his  day  —  leave 
him  an  uncrippled  spectator  and  analyst 
of  the  complicated  business  of  living. 
The  world  is  not  nearly  so  simple  a 
place  as  the  sexualists  seem  to  consider 
it.  To  the  author  of  "Vanity  Fair"  it 
was  not  simple  at  all.  Acting  and  react 
ing  upon  one  another,  his  characters 
crowd  the  canvas,  their  desires  and  am 
bitions,  their  successes  and  failures,  in 
extricably  interwoven  into  one  vast 
social  scheme.  It  is  not  the  decency  of 
Thackeray's  novels  which  affronts  us 
(we  are  seldom  unduly  aware  that  they 
are  decent),  but  the  severity  with  which 
he  judges  his  own  creations,  and  his 
rank  and  shameless  favouritism.  What 
business  has  he  to  coddle  Rawdon 
Crawley  (" honest  Rawdon,"  forsooth!), 
to  lay  siege  to  our  hearts  with  all  the 
skill  of  a  great  artificer,  and  compel  our 
liking  for  this  fool  and  reprobate?  What 
business  has  he  to  pursue  Becky  Sharp 

156 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

like  a  prosecuting  attorney,  to  trip  her 
up  at  every  step,  to  betray,  to  our  dis 
comfiture,  his  cold  hostility?  He  treats 
Blanche  Amory  in  the  same  merciless 
fashion,  and  no  one  cares.  But  Becky! 
Becky,  that  peerless  adventuress  who, 
as  Mr.  Brownell  reminds  us,  ran  her 
memorable  career  before  psychology 
was  thought  of  as  an  essential  element 
of  fiction.  Becky  whose  scheming  has 
beguiled  our  weary  hours,  and  recom 
pensed  us  for  the  labour  of  learning  to 
read.  How  shall  we  fathom  the  mental 
attitude  of  a  novelist  who  could  create 
such  a  character,  control  her  fluctuat 
ing  fortunes,  lift  her  to  dizzy  heights, 
topple  her  to  ruin,  extricate  her  from 
the  dust  and  d6bris  of  her  downfall,  — 
and  hate  her! 

Trollope,  working  on  a  lower  level, 
observant  rather  than  creative,  was 
less  stern  a  moralist  than  Thackeray, 
but  infinitely  more  cautious  of  his  foot 
steps.  He  kept  soberly  in  the  appointed 
157 


Points  of  Friction 

path,  and  never  once  in  thirty  years 
trod  on  the  grass  or  flower-beds.  Lady 
Glencora  Palliser  thinks,  indeed,  of 
leaving  her  husband ;  but  she  does  not  do 
it,  and  her  continency  is  rewarded  after 
a  fashion  which  is  very  satisfactory  to 
the  reader.  Mr.  Palliser  aspires  some 
what  stiffly  to  be  the  lover  of  Lady 
Dumbello;  but  that  wise  worldling, 
ranking  love  the  least  of  assets,  declines 
to  make  any  sacrifice  at  its  shrine. 
Trollope  unhesitatingly  and  proudly 
claimed  for  himself  the  quality  of  harm- 
lessness.  "I  do  believe,"  he  said,  "that 
no  girl  has  risen  from  the  reading  of  my 
pages  less  modest  than  she  was  before, 
and  that  some  girls  may  have  learned 
from  them  that  modesty  is  a  charm 
worth  possessing." 

This  is  one  of  the  admirable  senti 
ments  which  should  have  been  left  un 
spoken.  It  is  a  true  word  as  far  as  it  goes, 
but  more  suggestive  of  "Little  Women," 
or  "A  Summer  in  Leslie  Goldthwaite's 

158 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

Life,"  than  of  those  virile,  varied  and 
animated  novels  which  make  no  appeal 
to  immaturity.  In  Trollope's  teeming 
world,  as  in  the  teeming  world  about  us, 
a  few  young  people  fall  in  love  and  are 
married,  but  this  is  an  infrequent  epi 
sode.  Most  of  his  men  and  women,  like 
the  men  and  women  whom  we  know, 
are  engrossed  in  other  activities.  Once, 
indeed,  Bishop  Proudie  wooed  and  won 
Mrs.  Proudie.  Once  Archdeacon  Gran tly 
wooed  and  won  Mrs.  Grantly.  But 
neither  of  these  gentlemen  could  possi 
bly  have  belonged  to  "the  great  cruis 
ing  brotherhood  of  the  Pilgrims  of 
Love."  "Le  culte  de  la  femme"  has 
never  been  a  popular  pastime  in  Britain, 
and  Trollope  was  the  last  man  on  the 
island  to  have  appreciated  its  signifi 
cance.  He  preferred  politics,  the  hunt 
ing-field,  and  the  church. 

Yet   surely   Archdeacon   Grantly   is 
worth  a  brace  of  lovers.  With  what  sin 
cerity  he  is  drawn,  and  with  what  con- 
159 


Points  of  Friction 

summate  care!  A  churchman  who,  as 
Sir  Leslie  Stephen  somewhat  petulantly 
observes,  "gives  no  indication  of  having 
any  religious  views  whatever,  beyond  a 
dislike  to  dissenters."  A  solidly  respect 
able  member  of  provincial  clerical  soci 
ety,  ambitious,  worldly,  prizing  wealth, 
honouring  rank,  unspiritual,  unpro- 
gressive,  —  but  none  the  less  a  man 
who  would  have  proved  his  worth  in  the 
hour  of  England's  trial. 

It  is  a  testimony  to  the  power  of 
fiction  that,  having  read  with  breath 
less  concern  and  through  countless 
pages  Mr.  Britling's  reflections  on 
the  war,  my  soul  suddenly  cried  out 
within  me  for  the  reflections  of  Arch 
deacon  Grantly.  Mr.  Britling  is  an  acute 
and  sensitive  thinker.  The  archdeacon's 
mental  processes  are  of  the  simplest. 
Mr.  Britling  has  winged  his  triumphant 
flight  from  "the  clumsy,  crawling,  snob 
bish,  comfort-loving  caterpillar  of  Vic 
torian  England."  The  archdeacon  is 
160 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

still  confessedly  a  grub.  Mr.  Britling  has 
''truckled  to  no  domesticated  god."  The 
archdeacon's  deity  is  open  to  such 
grievous  innuendoes.  Yet  I  wish  I  could 
have  stood  on  the  smooth  lawn  of  Plum- 
stead,  and  have  heard  what  the  arcti- 
deacon  had  to  say  when  he  learned  that 
an  English  scholar  and  gentleman  had 
smuggled  out  of  England,  by  the  help 
of  a  female  "confidential  agent,"  a 
treacherous  appeal  to  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  asking  that  pressure 
should  be  brought  upon  fighting  Eng 
lishmen  in  the  interests  of  peace.  I  wish 
I  could  have  heard  the  cawing  rooks  of 
Plumstead  echo  his  mighty  wrath.  For 
there  is  that  in  the  heart  of  a  man,  even 
a  Victorian  churchman  with  a  love  of 
preferment  and  a  distaste  for  dissenters, 
which  holds  scatheless  the  sacred  thing 
called  honour. 

Trollope  is  as  frank  about  the  arch 
deacon's  frailties  as  Mr.  Wells  is  frank 
about  Mr.  Britling's  frailties.    In  pip- 
161 


Points  of  Friction 

ing  days  of  peace,  the  archdeacon's 
contempt  for  Mr.  Britling  would  have 
been  as  sincere  and  hearty  as  Mr. 
Britling's  contempt  for  the  archdeacon. 
But  under  the  hard,  heroic  discipline  of 
war  there  would  have  come  to  the  arch 
deacon,  as  to  Mr.  Britling,  a  white  dawn 
of  revelation.  Both  men  have  the  liber 
ating  qualities  of  manhood. 

It  is  always  hard  to  make  an  elastic 
phrase  fit  with  precision.  We  know  what 
we  mean  by  Victorian  conventions  and 
hypocrisies,  but  the  perpetual  intrusion 
of  blinding  truths  disturbs  our  point  of 
view.  The  new  Reform  bill  and  the 
extension  of  the  suffrage  were  hardy 
denials  of  convention.  "The  Origin  of 
Species"  and  "Zoological  Evidences  as 
to  Man's  Place  in  Nature"  were  not 
published  in  the  interests  of  hypocrisy. 
There  was  nothing  oppressively  respect 
able  about  "The  Ring  and  the  Book"; 
and  Swinburne  can  hardly  be  said  to 
have  needed  correction  at  Zola's  hands. 
162 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

These  mid-Victorian  products  have  a 
savour  of  freedom  about  them,  and  so 
has  "The  Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel." 
Even  the  Homeric  eloquence  of  Ruskin 
was  essentially  the  eloquence  of  the 
free.  The  two  lessons  he  sought  to  drive 
home  to  his  reluctant  readers  were,  first, 
that  Englishmen  were  not  living  on  an 
illuminated  earth  spot,  under  the  espe 
cial  patronage  of  the  Almighty;  and, 
second,  that  no  one  was  called  by  Provi 
dence  to  the  enjoyment  of  wealth  and 
security.  If  such  unpleasant  and  reiter 
ated  truths  —  as  applicable  to  the 
United  States  to-day  as  they  were  to 
Victoria's  England  —  are  "smug,"  then 
Jeremiah  is  sugar-coated,  and  the  Bap 
tist  an  apostle  of  ease. 

The  English  have  at  all  times  lacked 
the  courage  of  their  emotions,  but  not 
the  emotions  themselves.  Their  reti 
cence  has  stood  for  strength  as  well  as 
for  stiffness.  The  pre-Raphaelites,  in 
deed,  surrendered  their  souls  with  docil- 

163 


Points  of  Friction 

ity  to  every  wavelet  of  feeling,  and  pro 
duced  something  iridescent,  like  the 
shining  of  wet  sand.  Love,  according  to 
their  canon,  was  expressed  with  trans 
parent  ease.  It  was  "a  great  but  rather 
sloppy  passion,"  says  Mr.  Ford  Madox 
Hueffer,  "which  you  swooned  about  on 
broad  general  lines."  A  pre-Raphaelite 
corsair  languished  as  visibly  as  a  pre- 
Raphaelite  seraph.  He  could  be  bowled 
over  by  a  worsted  ball;  but  he  was  at 
least  more  vigorous  and  more  ruddy 
than  a  cubist  nude.  One  doubted  his 
seared  conscience  and  his  thousand 
crimes;  but  not  his  ability  to  walk  un 
assisted  downstairs. 

The  Victorian  giants  were  of  mighty 
girth.  They  trod  the  earth  with  proud 
and  heavy  steps,  and  with  a  strength 
of  conviction  which  was  as  vast  and 
tranquil  as  the  plains.  We  have  parted 
with  their  convictions  and  with  their 
tranquillity.  We  have  parted  also  with 
their  binding  prejudices  and  with  their 


The  Virtuous  Victorian 

standards  of  taste.  Freedom  has  come 
to  us,  not  broadening  down 

"from  precedent  to  precedent," 

but  swiftly  and  comprehensively.  There 
are  no  more  taboos,  no  more  silent  or 
sentimental  hypocrisies.  We  should  now 
know  a  great  many  interesting  details 
concerning  the  Marquis  of  Steyne  and 
the  Duke  of  Omnium,  if  these  two  im 
posing  figures  had  not  passed  forever 
from  our  ken.  We  should  have  search 
lights  thrown  upon  Becky  Sharp,  if 
Becky  had  not  escaped  into  the  gloom. 
Her  successors  sin  exhaustively,  and 
with  a  lamentable  lack  of  esprit.  We 
are  bidden  to  scrutinize  their  transgres 
sions,  but  Becky's  least  peccadillo  is 
more  engaging  than  all  their  broken 
commandments.  The  possibility  of  pro 
found  tediousness  accompanying  per 
fect  candour  dawns  slowly  on  the  truth- 
tellers  of  fiction.  It  takes  a  great  ar 
tist,  like  Edith  Wharton,  to  recognize 

165 


Points  of  Friction 

and  deplore  "the  freedom  of  speech 
which  never  arrives  at  wit,  and  the 
freedom  of  act  which  never  makes  for 
romance." 


Woman  Enthroned 

THE  Michigan  magistrate  who  gave 
orders  that  a  stalwart  male  angel 
presiding  over  the  gateway  of  a  cemetery 
should  be  recast  in  feminine  mould  may 
have  been  an  erring  theologian  and  a 
doubtful  art-critic;  but  that  he  was  a 
sound-hearted  American  no  one  can 
deny.  He  was  not  thinking  of  Azrael  the 
mighty  who  had  garnered  that  little 
harvest  of  death;  or  of  Michael,  great 
leader  of  the  "fighting  seraphim," 
whose  blade 

"smote  and  felled 
Squadrons  at  once"; 

or  of  Gabriel  the  messenger.  Holy  Writ 
was  as  remote  from  his  mental  vision 
as  was  Paradise  Lost.  He  was  thinking 
very  properly  of  the  "angel  in  the 
house,"  and  this  feminine  ideal  was 
affronted  by  the  robust  outlines,  no 
167 


Points  of  Friction 

less  than  by  the  robust  virtues,  associ 
ated  with  the  heavenly  host.  Cowley's 
soothing  compromise,  which  was  de 
signed  as  a  compliment  to  a  lady,  and 
which,  instead  of  unsexing  angels,  en 
dowed  them  with  a  double  line  of  poten 
cies,  — 

"They  are  than  Man  more  strong,  and  more  than 
Woman  sweet,"  — 

is  not  easily  expressed  in  art.  The  very 
gallant  Michigan  gentleman  simplified 
the  situation  by  eliminating  the  mascu 
line  element.  He  registered  his  profes 
sion  of  faith  in  the  perfectibility  of 
women. 

It  is  awkward  to  be  relegated  to  the 
angelic  class,  and  to  feel  that  one  does 
not  fit.  Intelligent  feminists  sometimes 
say  that  chivalry  —  that  inextinguish 
able  point  of  view  which  has  for  centu 
ries  survived  its  own  death-notices- 
is  more  disheartening  than  contempt. 
Chivalry  is  essentially  protective.  It  is 
rooted  in  the  consciousness  of  superior 
1 68 


Woman  Enthroned 

strength.  It  is  expansively  generous  and 
scrimpingly  just.  It  will  not  assure  to 
women  a  fair  field  and  no  favours, 
which  is  the  salvation  of  all  humanity; 
but  it  will  protect  them  from  the  conse 
quences  of  their  own  deeds,  and  that 
way  lies  perdition. 

Down  through  the  ages  we  see  the 
working  of  this  will.  Rome  denied  to 
women  all  civic  rights,  but  allowed 
them  many  privileges.  They  were  not 
permitted  to  make  any  legal  contract. 
They  were  not  permitted  to  bequeath 
their  own  fortunes,  or  —  ordinarily  — 
to  give  testimony  in  court.  But  they 
might  plead  ignorance  of  the  law,  "as 
a  ground  for  dissolving  an  obligation," 
which,  if  often  convenient,  was  always 
demoralizing.  Being  somewhat  con 
temptuously  absolved  from  the  oath  of 
allegiance  in  the  Middle  Ages,  they 
were  as  a  consequence  immune  from 
outlawry.  On  the  other  hand,  the  se 
verity  with  which  they  were  punished 
169 


Points  of  Friction 

for  certain  crimes  which  were  presumed 
to  come  easy  to  them  —  poisoning,  hus 
band-murder,  witchcraft  (King  Jamie 
was  not  the  only  wiseacre  who  mar 
velled  that  there  should  be  twenty 
witches  to  one  warlock)  —  is  evidence 
of  fear  on  the  legislators'  part.  The  old 
est  laws,  the  oldest  axioms  which  ante 
date  all  laws,  betray  this  uneasy  sense 
of  insecurity.  "Day  and  night  must 
women  be  held  by  their  protectors  in  a 
state  of  dependence,"  says  Manu,  the 
Hindu  Noah,  who  took  no  female  with 
him  in  his  miraculously  preserved  boat, 
but  was  content  with  his  own  safety, 
and  trusted  the  continuance  of  the  race 
to  the  care  and  ingenuity  of  the  gods. 

In  our  day,  and  in  our  country,  women 
gained  their  rights  (I  use  the  word 
" rights"  advisedly,  because,  though  its 
definition  be  disputed,  every  one  knows 
what  it  implies)  after  a  prolonged,  but 
not  embittered  struggle.  Certain  States 
moved  so  slowly  that  they  were  over- 
170 


Woman  Enthroned 

taken  by  a  Federal  Amendment.  Even 
with  the  franchise  to  back  them,  Ameri 
can  women  have  a  hard  time  making 
their  way  in  the  professions,  though  a 
great  deal  of  courtesy  is  shown  them  by 
professional  men.  They  have  a  hard 
time  making  their  way  in  trades, 
where  the  unions  block  their  progress. 
They  have  a  very  small  share  of  political 
patronage,  and  few  good  positions  on 
the  civil  lists.  Whether  the  best  inter 
ests  of  the  country  will  be  advanced 
or  retarded  by  a  complete  recognition 
of  their  claims  —  which  implies  giv 
ing  them  an  even  chance  with  men 
—  is  a  point  on  which  no  one  can  speak 
with  authority.  The  absence  of  data 
leaves  room  only  for  surmise.  Women 
are  striving  to  gain  this  "even  chance" 
for  their  own  sakes,  which  is  lawful  and 
reasonable.  Their  public  utterances,  it  is 
true,  dwell  pointedly  on  the  regenera 
tion  of  the  world.  This  also  is  lawful  and 
reasonable.  Public  utterances  have  al- 
171 


Points  of  Friction 

ways  dwelt  on  the  regeneration  of  the 
world,  since  the  apple  was  eaten  and 
Paradise  closed  its  gates. 

Meanwhile  American  chivalry,  a 
strong  article  and  equal  to  anything 
Europe  ever  produced,  clings  passion 
ately  and  persistently  to  its  inward 
vision.  Ellen  Key  speaks  casually  of 
"the  vices  which  men  call  woman's 
nature."  If  Swedish  gentlemen  permit 
themselves  this  form  of  speech,  it  finds 
no  echo  in  our  loyal  land.  Two  things 
an  American  hates  to  do,  —  hold  a 
woman  accountable  for  her  misdeeds, 
and  punish  her  accordingly.  When 
Governor  Craig  of  North  Carolina  set 
aside  the  death-sentence  which  had 
been  passed  upon  a  murderess,  and  com 
mitted  her  to  prison  for  life,  he  gave  to 
the  public  this  plain  and  comprehensive 
statement:  "There  is  no  escape  from 
the  conclusion  that  Ida  Bell  Warren 
is  guilty  of  murder,  deliberate  and 
premeditated.  Germany  executed  the 
172 


Woman  Enthroned 

woman  spy ;  England  did  not.  The  action 
of  the  military  Governor  of  Belgium 
was  condemned  by  the  conscience  of 
the  world.  The  killing  of  this  woman 
would  send  a  shiver  through  North 
Carolina." 

Apart  from  the  fact  that  Edith  Cavell 
was  not  a  spy,  and  that  her  offence  was 
one  which  has  seldom  in  the  world's  his 
tory  been  so  cruelly  punished,  Governor 
Craig's  words  deserve  attention.  He  ex 
plicitly  exempted  a  woman,  because  she 
was  a  woman,  from  the  penalty  which 
would  have  been  incurred  by  a  man. 
Incidentally  he  was  compelled  to  com 
mute  the  death-sentence  of  her  confed 
erate,  as  it  was  hardly  possible  to  send 
the  murderous  wife  to  prison,  and  her 
murderous  accomplice  to  the  chair. 
That  the  execution  of  Mrs.  Warren 
would  have  sent  a  "shiver"  through 
North  Carolina  is  doubtless  true.  The 
Governor  had  received  countless  letters 
and  telegrams  protesting  against  the 
173 


Points  of  Friction 

infliction   of   the   death-penalty   on   a 
woman. 

One  of  the  reasons  which  has  been 
urged  for  the  total  abolition  of  this  pen 
alty  is  the  reluctance  of  juries  to  con 
vict  women  of  crimes  punishable  by 
death.  The  number  of  wives  who  mur 
der  their  husbands,  and  of  girls  who 
murder  their  lovers,  is  a  menace  to  soci 
ety.  Our  sympathetic  tolerance  of  these 
crimes  passionnes,  the  sensational  scenes 
in  court,  and  the  prompt  acquittals 
which  follow,  are  a  menace  to  law  and 
justice.  Better  that  their  perpetrators 
should  be  sent  to  prison,  and  suffer  a 
few  years  of  corrective  discipline,  until 
soft-hearted  sentimentalists  circulate 
petitions,  and  secure  their  pardon  and 
release. 

^  *  /The  right  to  be  judged  as  men  are 
judged  is  perhaps  the  only  form  'bt 
equality  which  feminists  fail  to  demand. 
Their  attitude  to  their  own  errata  is  well 
expressed  in  the  solemn  warning  ad- 
174 


Woman  Enthroned 

dressed  by  Mr.  Louis  Untermeyer's  Eve 
to  the  Almighty, 

"Pause,  God,  and  ponder,  ere  Thou  judgest  me!" 

The  right  to  be  punished  is  not,  and  has 
never  been,  a  popular  prerogative  with 
either  sex.  There  was,  indeed,  a  London 
baker  who  was  sentenced  in  the  year 
1816  to  be  whipped  and  imprisoned  for 
vagabondage.  He  served  his  term;  but, 
whether  from  clemency  or  from  over 
sight,  the  whipping  was  never  admin 
istered.  When  released,  he  promptly 
brought  action  against  the  prison  au 
thorities  because  he  had  not  been 
whipped,  ''according  to  the  statute," 
and  he  won  his  case.  Whether  or  not  the 
whipping  went  with  the  verdict  is  not 
stated ;  but  it  was  a  curious  joke  to  play 
with  the  grim  realities  of  British  law. 

American  women  are  no  such  stick 
lers  for  a  code.  They  acquiesce  in  their 
frequent  immunity  from  punishment, 
and  are  correspondingly,  and  very  nat- 
175 


Points  of  Friction 

urally,  indignant  when  they  find  them 
selves  no  longer  immuna^There  was  a 
pathetic  ring  in  the  explanation  offered 
some  years  ago  by  Mayor  Harrison  of 
Chicago,  whose  policemen  were  accused 
of  brutality  to  female  strikers  and  pick 
ets.  "When  the  women  do  anything  in 
violation  of  the  law,"  said  'the  Mayor 
to  a  delegation  of  citizens,  "the  police 
arrest  them.  And  then,  instead  of  going 
along  quietly  as  men  prisoners  would, 
the  women  sit  down  on  the  sidewalks. 
What  else  can  the  policemen  do  but  lift 
them  up?" 

If  men  "go  along  quietly,"  it  is  be 
cause  custom,  not  choice,  has  bowed 
their  necks  to  the  yoke  of  order  and 
equity.  They  break  the  law  without 
being  prepared  to  defy  it.  The  lawless 
ness  of  women  may  be  due  as  much  to 
their  long  exclusion  from  citizenship, 

"Some  reverence  for  the  laws  ourselves  have 
made," 

as  to  the  lenity  shown  them  by  men,  - 
176 


Woman  Enthroned 

a  lenity  which  they  stand  ever  ready  to 
abuse.  We  have  only  to  imagine  what 
would  have  happened  to  a  group  of  men 
who  had  chosen  to  air  a  grievance  by 
picketing  the  White  House,  the  speed 
with  which  they  would  have  been  ar 
rested,  fined,  dispersed,  and  forgotten, 
to  realize  the  nature  of  the  tolerance 
granted  to  women.  For  months  these 
female  pickets  were  unmolested.  Money 
was  subscribed  to  purchase  for  them 
umbrellas  and  overshoes.  The  Presi 
dent,  whom  they  were  affronting,  sent 
them  out  coffee  on  cold  mornings.  It 
was  only  when  their  utterances  became 
treasonable,  when  they  undertook  to 
assure  our  Russian  visitors  that  Mr. 
Wilson  and  Mr.  Root  were  deceiving 
Russia,  and  to  entreat  these  puzzled 
foreigners  to  help  them  free  our  nation, 
that  their  sport  was  suppressed,  and 
they  became  liable  to  arrest  and  impris 
onment. 

Much  censure  was  passed  upon  the 
177 


Points  of  Friction 

unreasonable  violence  of  these  women. 
The  great  body  of  American  suffragists 
repudiated  their  action,  and  the  anti- 
suffragists  used  them  to  point  stern 
morals  and  adorn  vivacious  tales.  But 
was  it  quite  fair  to  permit  them  in  the 
beginning  a  liberty  which  would  not 
have  been  accorded  to  men,  and  which 
led  inevitably  to  licence?  Were  they  not 
treated  as  parents  sometimes  treat  chil 
dren,  allowing  them  to  use  bad  language 
because,  "if  you  pay  no  attention  to 
them,  they  will  stop  it  of  their  own  ac 
cord  " ;  and  then,  when  they  do  not  stop 
it,  punishing  them  for  misbehaving  be 
fore  company?  When  a  sympathetic 
gentleman  wrote  to  a  not  very  sympa 
thetic  paper  to  say  that  the  second 
Liberty  Loan  would  be  more  popular  if 
Washington  would  "call  off  the  dogs  of 
war  on  women,"  he  turned  a  flashlight 
upon  the  fathomless  gulf  with  which 
sentimentalism  has  divided  the  sexes. 
No  one  dreams  of  calling  policemen  and 
178 


Woman  Enthroned 

magistrates  "dogs  of  war  "  because  they 
arrest  and  punish  men  for  disturbing 
the  peace.  If  men  claim  the  privileges  of 
citizenship,  they  are  permitted  to  suffer 
its  penalties. 

A  few  years  before  the  war,  a  rage  for 
compiling  useless  statistics  swept  over 
Europe  and  the  United  States.  When  it 
was  at  its  height,  some  active  minds 
bethought  them  that  children  might  be 
made  to  bear  their  part  in  the  guidance 
of  the  human  race.  Accordingly  a  series 
of  questions  —  some  sensible  and  some 
foolish  —  were  put  to  English,  German, 
and  American  school-children,  and  their 
enlightening  answers  were  given  to  the 
world.  One  of  these  questions  read: 
"Would  you  rather  be  a  man  or  a 
woman,  and  why?"  Naturally  this 
query  was  of  concern  only  to  little  girls. 
No  sane  educator  would  ask  it  of  a  boy. 
German  pedagogues  struck  it  off  the 
list.  They  said  that  to  ask  a  child, 
"Would  you  rather  be  something  you 
1/9 


Points  of  Friction 

must  be,  or  something  you  cannot  pos 
sibly  be?"  was  both  foolish  and  useless. 
Interrogations  concerning  choice  were 
of  value  only  when  the  will  was  a  deter 
mining  factor. 

No  such  logical  inference  chilled  the 
examiners'  zeal  in  this  inquisitive  land. 
The  question  was  asked  and  was  an 
swered.  We  discovered,  as  a  result,  that 
a  great  many  little  American  girls  (a 
minority,  to  be  sure,  but  a  respectable 
minority)  were  well  content  with  their 
sex;  not  because  it  had  its  duties  and 
dignities,  its  pleasures  and  exemptions; 
but  because  they  plainly  considered 
that  they  were  superior  to  little  Ameri 
can  boys,  and  were  destined,  when 
grown  up,  to  be  superior  to  American 
men.  One  small  New  England  maiden 
wrote  that  she  would  rather  be  a  woman 
because  "  Women  are  always  better 
than  men  in  morals."  Another,  because 
"Women  are  of  more  use  in  the  world." 
A  third,  because  "Women  learn  things 
i  So 


Woman  Enthroned 

quicker  than  men,  and  have  more 
intelligence."  And  so  on  through  vary 
ing  degrees  of  self-sufficiency. 

These  little  girls,  who  had  no  need  to 
echo  the  Scotchman's  prayer,  "Lord, 
gie  us  a  gude  conceit  o'  ourselves!" 
were  old  maids  in  the  making.  They 
had  stamped  upon  them  in  their  tender 
childhood  the  hall-mark  of  the  American 
spinster.  "The  most  ordinary  cause  of 
a  single  life,"  says  Bacon,  "is  liberty, 
especially  in  certain  self-pleasing  and 
humorous  minds."  But  it  is  reserved  for 
the  American  woman  to  remain  unmar 
ried  because  she  feels  herself  too  valu 
able  to  be  entrusted  to  a  husband's 
keeping.  Would  it  be  possible  in  any 
country  save  our  own  for  a  lady  to 
write  to  a  periodical,  explaining  "Why 
I  am  an  Old  Maid,"  and  be  paid  coin  of 
the  realm  for  the  explanation?  Would  it 
be  possible  in  any  other  country  to  hear 
such  a  question  as  "Should  the  Gifted 
Woman  Marry?"  seriously  asked,  and 
181 


Points  of  Friction 

seriously  answered?  Would  it  be  possi 
ble  for  any  sane  and  thoughtful  woman 
who  was  not  an  American  to  consider 
even  the  remote  possibility  of  our  spin 
sters  becoming  a  detached  class,  who 
shall  form  "the  intellectual  and  eco 
nomic  elite  of  the  sex,  leaving  marriage 
and  maternity  to  the  less  developed 
woman"  ?  What  has  become  of  the  be 
lief,  as  old  as  civilization,  that  marriage 
and  maternity  are  developing  processes, 
forcing  into  flower  a  woman's  latent 
faculties;  and  that  the  less-developed 
woman  is  inevitably  the  woman  who 
has  escaped  this  keen  and  powerful 
stimulus?  "Never,"  said  Edmond  de 
Goncourt,  "has  a  virgin,  young  or  old, 
produced  a  work  of  art."  One  makes 
allowance  for  the  Latin  point  of  view. 
And  it  is  possible  that  M.  de  Goncourt 
never  read  "Emma/^' 

There  is  a  formidable  lack  of  humour 
in  the  somewhat  contemptuous  attitude 
of  women,  whose  capabilities  have  not 
182 


Woman  Enthroned 

yet  been  tested,  toward  men  who  stand 
responsible  for  the  failures  of  the  world. 
It  denotes,  at  home  and  abroad,  a  den 
sity  not  far  removed  from  dulness.  In 
Mr.  St.  John  Ervine's  depressing  little 
drama,  "Mixed  Marriage,"  which  the 
Dublin  actors  played  in  New  York  some 
years  ago,  an  old  woman,  presumed  to 
be  witty  and  wise,  said  to  her  son's  be 
trothed:  "Sure,  I  believe  the  Lord  made 
Eve  when  He  saw  that  Adam  could  not 
take  care  of  himself";  and  the  remark 
reflected  painfully  upon  the  absence  of 
that  humorous  sense  which  we  used  to 
think  was  the  birthright  of  Irishmen. 
The  too  obvious  retort,  which  nobody 
uttered,  but  which  must  have  occurred 
to  everybody's  mind,  was  that  if  Eve 
had  been  designed  as  a  care-taker,  she 
had  made  a  shining  failure  of  her  job. 

That  astute  Oriental,  Sir  Rabindra- 
nath  Tagore,  manifested  a  wisdom  be 
yond  all  praise  in  his  recognition  of 
American  standards,  when  addressing 
183 


Points  of  Friction 

American  audiences.  As  the  hour  for  his 
departure  drew  nigh,  he  was  asked  to 
write,  and  did  write,  a  "Parting  Wish 
for  the  Women  of  America,"  giving 
graceful  expression  to  the  sentiments  he 
knew  he  was  expected  to  feel.  The  skill 
with  which  he  modified  and  popularized 
an  alien  point  of  view  revealed  the  sea 
soned  lecturer.  He  told  his  readers  that 
' '  God  has  sent  woman  to  love  the  world , ' ' 
and  to  build  up  a  "spiritual  civiliza 
tion."  He  condoled  with  them  because 
they  were  "passing  through  great  suf 
ferings  in  this  callous  age."  His  heart 
bled  for  them,  seeing  that  their  hearts 
"are  broken  every  day,  and  victims  are 
snatched  from  their  arms  to  be  thrown 
under  the  car  of  material  progress."  The 
Occidental  sentiment  which  regards 
man  simply  as  an  offspring,  and  a 
fatherless  offspring  at  that  (no  woman, 
says  Olive  Schreiner,  could  look  upon  a 
battle-field  without  thinking,  "So  many 
mothers'  sons!"),  came  as  naturally  to 
184 


Woman  Enthroned 

Sir  Rabindranath  as  if  he  had  been  to 
the  manner  born.  He  was  content  to 
see  the  passion  and  pain,  the  sorrow 
and  heroism  of  men,  as  reflections  mir 
rored  in  a  woman's  soul.  The  ingenious 
gentlemen  who  dramatize  Biblical  nar 
ratives  for  the  American  stage,  and 
who  are  hampered  at  every  step  by 
the  obtrusive  masculinity  of  the  East, 
might  find  a  sympathetic  supporter  in 
this  accomplished  and  accommodating 
Hindu. 

The  story  of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren, 
for  example,  is  perhaps  the  best  tale 
ever  told  the  world,  —  a  tale  of  adven 
ture  on  a  heroic  scale,  with  conflicting 
human  emotions  to  give  it  poignancy 
and  power.  It  deals  with  pastoral  sim 
plicities,  with  the  splendours  of  court, 
and  with  the  "high  finance"  which 
turned  a  free  landholding  people  into 
tenantry  of  the  crown.  It  is  a  story  of 
men,  the  only  lady  introduced  being  a 
disedifying  dea  ex  machina,  whose  popu- 

185 


Points  of  Friction 

larity  in  Italian  art  has  perhaps  blinded 
us  to  the  brevity  of  her  Biblical  role. 
But  when  this  most  dramatic  narrative 
was  cast  into  dramatic  form,  Joseph's 
splendid  loyalty  to  his  master,  his  cold 
and  vigorous  chastity,  were  nullified  by 
giving  him  an  Egyptian  sweetheart. 
Lawful  marriage  with  this  young  lady 
being  his  sole  solicitude,  the  advances 
of  Potiphar's  wife  were  less  of  a  tempta 
tion  than  an  intrusion.  The  keynote  of 
the  noble  old  tale  was  destroyed,  to 
assure  to  woman  her  proper  place  as 
the  guardian  of  man's  integrity. 

Still  more  radical  was  the  treatment 
accorded  to  the  parable  of  the  "Prodi 
gal  Son,"  which  was  expanded  into  a 
pageant  play,  and  acted  with  a  hardy 
realism  permitted  only  to  the  strictly 
ethical  drama.  The  scriptural  setting  of 
the  story  was  preserved,  but  its  patri 
archal  character  was  sacrificed  to  mod 
ern  sentiment  which  refuses  to  be  in 
terested  in  the  relation  of  father  and 
186 


Woman  Enthroned 

son.  Therefore  we  beheld  the  prodigal 
equipped  with  a  mother  and  a  trusting 
female  cousin,  who,  between  them,  put 
tr^  poor  old  gentleman  out  of  commis 
sion,  reducing  him  to  his  proper  level  of 
purveyor-in-ordinary  to  the  household. 
It  was  the  prodigal's  mother  who  bade 
her  reluctant  husband  give  their  wilful 
son  his  portion.  It  was  the  prodigal's 
mother  who  watched  for  him  from  the 
house-top,  and  silenced  the  voice  of 
censure.  It  was  the  prodigal's  mother 
who  welcomed  his  return,  and  persuaded 
father  and  brother  to  receive  him  into 
favour.  The  whole  duty  of  man  in  that 
Syrian  household  was  to  obey  the  im 
pelling  word  of  woman,  and  bestow 
blessings  and  bags  of  gold  according  to 
her  will. 

The  expansion  of  the  maternal  senti 
ment  until  it  embraces,  or  seeks  to  em 
brace,  humanity,  is  the  vision  of  the 
emotional,  as  opposed  to  the  intellec 
tual,  feminist.  "The  Mother  State  of 
187 


Points  of  Friction 

which  we  dream"  offers  no  attraction 
to  many  plain  and  practical  workers, 
and  is  a  veritable  nightmare  to  others. 
"Woman,"  writes  an  enthusiast  in  the 
"Forum,"  "means  to  be,  not  simply  the 
mother  of  the  individual,  but  of  society, 
of  the  State  with  its  man-made  institu 
tions,  of  art  and  science,  of  religion  and 
morals.  All  life,  physical  and  spiritual, 
personal  and  social,  needs  to  be  moth 
ered." 

"Needs  to  be  mothered"!  When  men 
proffer  this  welter  of  sentiment  in  the 
name  of  women,  how  is  it  possible  to 
say  convincingly  that  the  girl  student 
standing  at  the  gates  of  knowledge  is  as 
humble-hearted  as  the  boy;  that  she 
does  not  mean  to  mother  medicine,  or 
architecture,  or  biology,  any  more  than 
the  girl  in  the  banker's  office  means  to 
mother  finance?  Her  hopes  for  the  future 
are  founded  on  the  belief  that  fresh 
opportunities  will  meet  a  sure  response ; 
but  she  does  not,  if  she  be  sane,  measure 
1 88 


Woman  Enthroned 

her  untried  powers  by  any  presumptive 
scale  of  valuation.  She  does  not  consider 
the  advantages  which  will  accrue  to 
medicine,  biology,  or  architecture  by 
her  entrance  —  as  a  woman  —  into  any 
one  of  these  fields.  Their  need  for  her 
maternal  ministration  concerns  her  less 
than  her  need  for  the  magnificent  her 
itage  they  present. 

It  has  been  said  many  times  that  the 
craving  for  material  profit  is  not  instinc 
tive  in  women.  If  it  is  not  instinctive,  it 
will  be  acquired,  because  every  legiti 
mate  incentive  has  its  place  in  the  prog 
ress  of  the  world.  The  demand  that 
women  shall  be  paid  men's  wages  for 
men's  work  may  represent  a  desire  for 
justice  rather  than  a  desire  for  gain; 
but  money  fairly  earned  is  sweet  in  the 
hand,  and  to  the  heart.,  An  open  field, 
an  even  start,  no  handicap,  no  favours, 
and  the  same  goal  for  all.  This  is  the 
worker's  dream  of  paradise.  Women 
have  long  known  that  lack  of  citizen- 


Points  of  Friction 

ship  was  an  obstacle  in  their  path.  Self- 
love  has  prompted  them  to  overrate 
their  imposed,  and  underrate  their  in 
herent,  disabilities.  "Whenever  you  see 
a  woman  getting  a  high  salary,  make  up 
your  mind  that  she  is  giving  twice  the 
value  received,'*  writes  an  irritable  cor 
respondent  to  the  "Survey";  and  this 
pretension  paralyzes  effort.  To  be  satis 
fied  with  ourselves  is  to  be  at  the  end  of 
our  usefulness. 

M.  fimile  Faguet,  that  most  radical 
and  least  sentimental  of  French  femi 
nists,  would  have  opened  wide  to  women 
every  door  of  which  man  holds  the  key. 
He  would  have  given  them  every  legal 
right  and  burden  which  they  are  physi 
cally  fitted  to  enjoy  and  to  bear.  He 
was  as  unvexed  by  doubts  as  he  was 
uncheered  by  illusions.  He  had  no  more 
fear  of  the  downfall  of  existing  institu 
tions  than  he  had  hope  for  the  regenera 
tion  of  the  world.  The  equality  of  men 
and  women,  as  he  saw  it,  lay,  not  in 
190 


Woman  Enthroned 

their  strength,  but  in  their  weakness; 
not  in  their  intelligence,  but  in  their 
stupidity;  not  in  their  virtues,  but  in 
their  perversity.  Yet  there  was  no  taint 
of  pessimism  in  his  rational  refusal  to  be 
deceived.  No  man  saw  more  clearly,  or 
recognized  more  justly,  the  art  with 
which  his  countrywomen  have  cemented 
and  upheld  a  social  state  at  once  flexible 
and  orderly,  enjoyable  and  inspiriting. 
That  they  have  been  the  allies,  and  not 
the  rulers,  of  men  in  building  this  fine 
fabric  of  civilization  was  also  plain  to 
his  mind.  Allies  and  equals  he  held  them, 
but  nothing  more.  "Lafemme  est  par- 
faitewent  Vegale  de  I'homme,  mais  elle 
n'est  que  son  egale." 

Naturally  to  such  a  man  the  attitude 
of  Americans  toward  women  was  as  un 
sympathetic  as  was  the  attitude  of 
Dahomeyans.  He  did  not  condemn  it 
(possibly  he  did  not  condemn  the 
Dahomeyans,  seeing  that  the  civic  and 
social  ideals  of  France  and  Dahomey 
191 


Points  of  Friction 

are  in  no  wise  comparable) ;  but  he  ex 
plained  with  careful  emphasis  that  the 
French  woman,  unlike  her  American 
sister,  is  not,  and  does  not  desire  to  be, 
"un  objet  sacro-saint."  The  reverence 
for  women  in  the  United  States  he  as 
sumed  to  be  a  national  trait,  a  sort  of 
national  institution  among  a  proud  and 
patriotic  people.  "  L*  idolatrie  de  lafemme 
est  une  chose  americaine  par  excellence.19 
The  superlative  complacency  of  Amer 
ican  women  is  due  largely  to  the  ora 
torical  adulation  of  American  men,  — 
an  adulation  that  has  no  more  substance 
than  has  the  foam  on  beer.  I  have  heard 
a  candidate  for  office  tell  his  female 
audience  that  men  are  weak  and  women 
are  strong,  that  men  are  foolish  and 
women  are  wise,  that  men  are  shallow 
and  women  are  deep,  that  men  are  sub 
missive  tools  whom  women,  the  leaders 
of  the  race,  must  instruct  to  vote  for 
him.  He  did  not  believe  a  word  that  he 
said,  and  his  hearers  did  not  believe  that 
192 


Woman  Enthroned 

he  believed  it;  yet  the  grossness  of  his 
flattery  kept  pace  with  the  hypocrisy 
of  his  self-depreciation.  The  few  men 
present  wore  an  attitude  of  dejection, 
not  unlike  that  of  the  little  boy  in 
" Punch"  who  has  been  told  that  he  is 

made  of 

"Snips  and  snails, 
And  puppy  dogs'  tails," 

and  can  "hardly  believe  it." 

What  Mr.  Roosevelt  called  the  "luna 
tic  fringe"  of  every  movement  is  pain 
fully  obtrusive  in  the  great  and  noble 
movement  which  seeks  fair  play  for 
women.  The  "full  habit  of  speech"  is 
never  more  regrettable  than  when  the 
cause  is  so  good  that  it  needs  but  tem 
perate  championing.  "Without  the  aid 
of  women,  England  could  not  carry  on 
this  war,"  said  Mr.  Asquith  in  the  sec 
ond  year  of  the  great  struggle,  —  an  ob 
vious  statement,  no  doubt,  but  simple, 
truthful,  and  worthy  to  be  spoken.  Why 
should  the  "New  Republic,"  in  an  arti- 
193 


Points  of  Friction 

cle  bearing  the  singularly  ill-mannered 
title,  "Thank  You  For  Nothing!"  have 
heaped  scorn  upon  these  words?  Why 
should  its  writer  have  made  the  angry 
assertion  that  the  British  Empire  had 
been  "deprived  of  two  generations  of 
women's  leadership,"  because  only  a 
world's  war  could  drill  a  new  idea  into  a 
statesman's  head?  The  war  has  drilled 
a  great  many  new  ideas  into  all  our 
heads.  Absence  of  brain  matter  could 
alone  have  prevented  this  infusion.  But 
"leadership"  is  a  large  word.  It  is  not 
what  men  are  asking,  and  it  is  not  what 
women  are  offering,  even  at  this  stage  of 
the  game.  Partnership  is  as  far  as  obli 
gation  on  the  one  side  and  ambition  on 
the  other  are  prepared  to  go ;  and  a  clear 
understanding  of  this  truth  has  accom 
plished  great  results. 

Therefore,  when  we  are  told  that  the 
women  of  to-day  are  "giving  their  vital 
ity  to  an  anaemic  world,"  we  wonder  if 
the  speaker  has  read  a  newspaper  for 
194 


Woman  Enthroned 

the  past  half-dozen  years.  The  passion 
ate  cruelty  and  the  passionate  heroism 
of  men  have  soaked  the  earth  with  blood. 
Never,  since  it  came  from  its  Maker's 
hands,  has  it  seen  such  shame  and 
glory.  There  may  be  some  who  still  be 
lieve  that  this  blood  would  not  have 
been  spilled  had  women  shared  in  the 
citizenship  of  nations;  but  the  argu 
ments  they  advance  in  support  of  an 
undemonstrable  theory  show  a  soothing 
ignorance  of  events. 

"War  will  pass,"  says  Olive  Schreiner, 
"when  intellectual  culture  and  activity 
have  made  possible  to  the  female  an 
equal  share  in  the  control  and  govern 
ment  of  modern  national  life."  And 
why?  Because  "Arbitration  and  com 
pensation  will  naturally  occur  to  her  as 
cheaper  and  simpler  methods  of  bridg 
ing  the  gaps  in  national  relationship." 

Strange  that  this  idea  never  "natu 
rally"  occurred  to  man !  Strange  that  no 
delegate  to  The  Hague  should  have  per- 
195 


Points  of  Friction 

ceived  so  straight  a  path  to  peace! 
Strange  that  when  Germany  struck  her 
long-planned,  well-prepared  blow,  this 
cheap  and  simple  measure  failed  to  stay 
her  hand!  War  will  pass  when  injustice 
passes.  Never  before,  unless  hope  leaves 
the  world. 

That  any  civilized  people  should  bar 
women  from  the  practice  of  law  is  to  the 
last  degree  absurd  and  unreasonable. 
There  never  can  be  an  adequate  cause 
for  such  an  injurious  exclusion.  There  is, 
in  fact,  no  cause  at  all,  only  an  arbi 
trary  decision  on  the  part  of  those  who 
have  the  authority  to  decide.  Yet  noth 
ing  is  less  worth  while  than  to  speculate 
dizzily  on  the  part  women  are  going  to 
play  in  any  field  from  which  they  are  at 
present  debarred.  They  may  be  ready 
to  burnish  up  "the  rusty  old  social  or 
ganism,"  and  make  it  shine  like  new; 
but  this  is  not  the  work  which  lies 
immediately  at  hand.  A  suffragist  who 
believes  that  the  world  needs  house- 


Woman  Enthroned 

cleaning  has  made  the  terrifying  state 
ment  that  when  English  women  enter 
the  law  courts  they  will  sweep  away  all 
"legal  frippery,"  all  the  " accumulated 
dust  and  rubbish  of  centuries."  Latin 
terms,  flowing  gowns  and  wigs,  silly 
staves  and  worn-out  symbols,  all  must 
go,  and  with  them  must  go  the  anti 
quated  processes  which  confuse  and  re 
tard  justice.  The  women  barristers  of 
the  future  will  scorn  to  have  "  legal  na 
tures  like  Portia's,"  basing  their  claims 
on  quibbles  and  subterfuges.  They  will 
cut  all  Gordian  knots.  They  will  deal 
with  naked  simplicities. 

References  to  Portia  are  a  bit  dis 
quieting.  Her  law  was  stage  law,  good 
enough  for  the  drama  which  has  always 
enjoyed  a  jurisprudence  of  its  own.  We 
had  best  leave  her  out  of  any  serious 
discussion.  But  why  should  the  admis 
sion  of  women  to  the  bar  result  in  a 
volcanic  upheaval?  Women  have  prac 
tised  medicine  for  years,  and  have  not 
197 


Points  of  Friction 

revolutionized  it.  Painstaking  service, 
rather  than  any  brilliant  display  of 
originality,  has  been  their  contribution 
to  this  field.  It  is  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  their  advance  will  be  resolute  and 
beneficial.  If  they  ever  condescended 
to  their  profession,  they  do  so  no  longer. 
If  they  ever  talked  about  belonging  to 
"the  class  of  real  people,"  they  have 
relinquished  such  flowers  of  rhetoric.  If 
they  have  earnestly  desired  the  fran 
chise,  it  was  because  they  saw  in  it  jus 
tice  to  themselves,  not  the  torch  which 
would  enlighten  the  world. 

It  is  conceded  theoretically  that  wom 
an's  sphere  is  an  elastic  term,  embrac 
ing  any  work  she  finds  herself  able  to 
do,  —  not  necessarily  do  well,  because 
most  of  the  world's  work  is  done  badly, 
but  well  enough  to  save  herself  from  fail 
ure.  Her  advance  is  unduly  heralded 
and  unduly  criticized.  She  is  the  target 
for  too  much  comment  from  friend  and 
foe.  On  the  one  hand,  a  keen  (but  of 


Woman  Enthroned 

course  perverted)  misogynist  like  Sir 
Andrew  Macphail,  welcomes  her  en 
trance  into  public  life  because  it  will 
tend  to  disillusionment.  If  woman  can 
be  persuaded  to  reveal  her  elemental 
inconsistencies,  man,  freed  in  some 
measure  from  her  charm  —  which  is  the 
charm  of  retenue  —  will  no  longer  be 
subject  to  her  rule.  On  the  other  hand, 
that  most  feminine  of  feminists,  Miss 
Jane  Addams,  predicts  that  "the  dul- 
ness  which  inheres  in  both  domestic  and 
social  affairs  when  they  are  carried  on 
by  men  alone,  will  no  longer  be  a  neces 
sary  attribute  of  public  life  when  gra 
cious  and  grey-haired  women  become 
part  of  it." 

If  Sir  Andrew  is  as  acid  as  Schopen 
hauer,  Miss  Addams  is  early  Victorian. 
Her  point  of  view  presupposes  a  condi 
tion  of  which  we  had  not  been  even 
dimly  aware.  Granted  that  domesticity 
palls  on  the  solitary  male.  Housekeep 
ing  seldom  attracts  him.  The  tea-table 
199 


Points  of  Friction 

and  the  friendly  cat  fail  to  arrest  his 
roving  tendencies.  Granted  that  some 
men  are  polite  enough  to  say  that  they 
do  not  enjoy  social  events  in  which 
women  take  no  part.  They  showed  no  dis 
position  to  relinquish  such  pastimes  un 
til  the  arid  days  of  prohibition,  and  even 
now  they  cling  forlornly  to  the  ghost  of 
a  cheerful  past.  When  they  assert,  how 
ever,  that  they  would  have  a  much  bet 
ter  time  if  women  were  present,  no  one 
is  wanton  enough  to  contradict  them. 
But  public  life!  The  arena  in  which 
whirling  ambition  sweeps  human  souls 
as  an  autumn  wind  sweeps  leaves; 
which  resounds  with  the  shouts  of  the 
conquerors  and  the  groans  of  the  con 
quered;  which  is  degraded  by  cupidity 
and  ennobled  by  achievement;  that  this 
field  of  adventure,  this  heated  race 
track  needs  to  be  relieved  from  dulness 
by  the  presence  and  participation  of 
elderly  ladies  is  the  crowning  vision  of 
sensibility. 

200 


Woman  Enthroned 

"Qui  veut  faire  1'ange  fait  la  bete" 
said  Pascal;  and  the  Michigan  angel  is 
a  danger  signal.  The  sentimental  and 
chivalrous  attitude  of  American  men 
reacts  alarmingly  when  they  are 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  actual 
terms  and  visible  consequences  of  wom 
an's  enfranchisement.  There  exists  a 
world:wide  and  age-long  belief  that 
what  women  want  they  get.  They  must 
wrant  it  hard  enough  and  long  enough  to 
make  their  desire  operative.  It  is  the  list 
less  and  preoccupied  unconcern  of  their 
own  sex  which  bars  their  progress.  But 
men  will  fall  into  a  flutter  of  admiration 
because  a  woman  runs  a  successful 
dairy-farm,  or  becomes  the  mayor  of 
a  little  town ;  and  they  will  look  aghast 
upon  such  commonplace  headlines  as 
these  in  their  morning  paper:  "Women 
Confess  Selling  Votes";  "Chicago 
Women  Arrested  for  Election  Frauds"; 
-  as  if  there  had  not  always  been,  and 
would  not  always  be,  a  percentage  of 
201 


Points  of  Friction 

unscrupulous  voters  in  every  electorate. 
No  sane  woman  believes  that  women,  as 
a  body,  will  vote  more  honestly  than 
men;  but  no  sane  man  believes  that 
they  will  vote  less  honestly.  They  are 
neither  the  "gateway  to  hell,*'  as  Ter- 
tullian  pointed  out,  nor  the  builders  of 
Sir  Rabindranath  Tagorc's  "spiritual 
civilization."  They  are  neither  the  re 
positories  of  wisdom,  nor  the  final  word 
of  folly. 

It  was  unwise  and  unfair  to  turn  a 
searchlight  upon  the  first  woman  in 
Congress,  and  exhibit  to  a  gaping  world 
her  perfectly  natural  limitations.  Such 
limitations  are  common  in  our  legisla 
tive  bodies,  and  excite  no  particular 
comment.  They  are  as  inherent  in  the 
average  man  as  in  the  average  woman. 
They  in  no  way  affect  the  question  of 
enfranchisement.  Give  as  much  and  ask 
no  more.  Give  no  more  and  ask  as  much. 
This  is  the  watchword  of  equality. 

"God  help  women  when  they  have 
202 


Woman  Enthroned 

only  their  rights!"  exclaimed  a  brilliant 
American  lawyer;  but  it  is  in  the  "only  " 
that  all  savour  lies.  Rights  and  privi 
leges  are  incompatible.  Emancipation 
implies  the  sacrifice  of  immunity,  the 
acceptance  of  obligation.  It  heralds  the 
reign  of  sober  and  disillusioning  experi 
ence.  Women,  as  M.  Faguet  reminds  us, 
are  only  the  equals  of  men ;  a  truth  which 
was  simply  phrased  in  the  old  Cornish 
adage,  "Lads  are  as  good  as  wenches 
when  they  are  washed." 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

THE  image  of  the  prohibition-bred 
American  youth  (not  this  genera 
tion,  but  the  next)  straying  through  the 
wine-drenched  and  ale-drenched  pages  of 
English  literature  captivates  the  fancy. 
The  classics,  to  be  sure,  are  equally  bibu 
lous  ;  but  with  the  classics  the  American 
youth  has  no  concern.  The  advance 
guard  of  educators  are  busy  clearing 
away  the  debris  of  Greek  and  Latin 
which  has  hitherto  clogged  his  path. 
There  is  no  danger  of  his  learning  from 
Homer  that  "Generous  wine  gives 
strength  to  toiling  men,"  or  from  Socra 
tes  that  "The  potter's  art  begins  with 
the  wine  jar,"  or  from  the  ever- scanda 
lous  Horace  that  "  Wine  is  mighty  to  in 
spire  hope,  and  to  drown  the  bitterness 
of  care."  The  professor  has  conspired 
with  the  prohibitionist  to  save  the  un- 
204 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

dergraduate  from  such  disedifying  sen 
timents. 

As  for  the  Bible,  where  corn  and  oil 
and  wine,  the  three  fruits  of  a  bounti 
ful  harvest,  are  represented  as  of  equal 
virtue,  it  will  probably  be  needful  to 
supply  such  texts  with  explanatory  and 
apologetic  footnotes.  The  sweet  and 
sober  counsel  of  Ecclesiastes :  "Forsake 
not  an  old  friend,  for  the  new  will  not 
be  like  to  him.  A  new  friend  is  as  new 
wine;  it  shall  grow  old,  and  thou  shalt 
drink  it  with  pleasure,"  has  made  its 
way  into  the  heart  of  humanity,  and 
has  been  embedded  in  the  poetry  of 
every  land.  But  now,  like  the  most 
lovely  story  of  the  marriage  feast  at 
Cana,  it  has  been  robbed  of  the  sim 
plicity  of  its  appeal.  I  heard  a  ser 
mon  preached  upon  the  marriage  feast 
which  ignored  the  miracle  altogether. 
The  preacher  dwelt  upon  the  dignity 
and  responsibility  of  the  married  state, 
reprobated  divorce,  and  urged  parents 
205 


Points  of  Friction 

to  send  their  children  to  Sunday  school. 
It  was  a  perfectly  good  sermon,  filled 
with  perfectly  sound  exhortations;  but 
the  speaker  "strayed."  Sunday  schools 
were  not  uppermost  in  the  holy  Moth 
er's  mind  when  she  perceived  and  pitied 
the  humiliation  of  her  friends. 

The  banishing  of  the  classics,  the 
careful  editing  of  the  Scriptures,  and 
the  comprehensive  ignorance  of  foreign 
languages  and  letters  which  distin 
guishes  the  young  American,  leaves  only 
the  field  of  British  and  domestic  liter 
ature  to  enlighten  or  bewilder  him. 
Now  New  England  began  to  print  books 
about  the  time  that  men  grew  restive 
as  to  the  definition  of  temperance.  Long 
fellow  wrote  a  "Drinking  Song"  to 
water,  which  achieved  humour  without 
aspiring  to  it,  and  Dr.  Holmes  wrote  a 
teetotaller's  adaptation  of  a  drinking 
song,  which  aspired  to  humour  without 
achieving  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  no 
drinking  songs,  not  even  the  real  ones 
206 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

and  the  good  ones  which  sparkle  in 
Scotch  and  English  verse,  have  any  il 
lustrative  value.  They  come  under  the 
head  of  special  pleading,  and  are  apt  to 
be  a  bit  defiant.  In  them,  as  in  the  tem 
perance  lecture,  "that  good  sister  of 
common  life,  the  vine,"  becomes  an 
exotic,  desirable  or  reprehensible  ac 
cording  to  the  point  of  view,  but  never 
simple  and  inevitable,  like  the  olive- 
tree  and  the  sheaves  of  corn. 

American  letters,  coming  late  in  the 
day,  are  virgin  of  wine.  There  have 
been  books,  like  Jack  London's  "John 
Barleycorn,"  written  in  the  cause  of 
temperance;  there  have  been  pleasant 
trifles,  like  Dr.  Weir  Mitchell's  "Ma 
deira  Party,"  written  to  commemorate 
certain  dignified  convivialities  which 
even  then  were  passing  silently  away; 
and  there  have  been  chance  allusions, 
like  Mr.  Dooley's  vindication  of  whisky 
from  the  charge  of  being  food:  "I 
wudden't  insult  it  be  placin'  it  on  the 
207 


Points  of  Friction 

same  low  plain  as  a  lobster  salad";  and 
his  loving  recollection  of  his  friend 
Schwartzmeister's  cocktail,  which  was 
of  such  generous  proportions  that  it 
"needed  only  a  few  noodles  to  look  like 
a  biled  dinner."  But  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  there  is  more  drinking  in  "Pick 
wick  Papers"  than  in  a  library  of 
American  novels.  It  is  drinking  with 
out  bravado,  without  reproach,  without 
justification.  For  natural  treatment  of 
a  debatable  theme,  Dickens  stands  un 
rivalled  among  novelists. 

We  are  told  that  the  importunate  vir 
tue  of  our  neighbours,  having  broken 
one  set  of  sympathies  and  understand 
ings,  will  in  time  deprive  us  of  meaner 
indulgences,  such  as  tobacco,  tea,  and 
coffee.  But  tobacco,  tea,  and  coffee, 
though  friendly  and  compassionate  to 
men,  are  late-comers  and  district-dwell 
ers.  They  do  not  belong  to  the  stately 
procession  of  the  ages,  like  the  wine 
which  Noah  and  Alexander  and  Caesar 
208 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

and  Praxiteles  and  Plato  and  Lord 
Kitchener  drank.  When  the  Elgin  mar 
bles  were  set  high  over  the  Parthenon, 
when  the  Cathedral  of  Chartres  grew 
into  beauty,  when  "Hamlet"  was  first 
played  at  the  Globe  Theatre,  men  lived 
merrily  and  wisely  without  tobacco, 
tea,  and  coffee,  but  not  without  wine. 
Tobacco  was  given  by  the  savage  to  the 
civilized  world.  It  has  an  accidental 
quality  which  adds  to  its  charm,  but 
which  promises  consolation  when  those 
who  are  better  than  we  want  to  be  have 
taken  it  away  from  us.  "I  can  under 
stand/*  muses  Dr.  Mitchell,  "the  dis 
covery  of  America,  and  the  invention  of 
printing;  but  what  human  want,  what 
instinct,  led  up  to  tobacco?  Imagine 
intuitive  genius  capturing  this  noble 
idea  from  the  odours  of  a  prairie  fire!" 
Charles  Lamb  pleaded  that  tobacco 
was  at  worst  only  a  "white  devil."  But 
it  was  a  persecuted  little  devil  which  for 
years  suffered  shameful  indignities.  We 
209 


Points  of  Friction 

have  Mr.  Henry  Adams's  word  for  it 
that,  as  late  as  1862,  Englishmen  were 
not  expected  to  smoke  in  the  house. 
They  went  out  of  doors  or  to  the  stables. 
Only  a  licensed  libertine  like  Monckton 
Milnes  permitted  his  guests  to  smoke 
in  their  rooms.  Half  a  century  later, 
Mr.  Rupert  Brooke,  watching  a  designer 
in  the  advertising  department  of  a  New 
York  store  making  "Matisse-like  illus 
trations  to  some  notes  on  summer  suit 
ings,"  was  told  by  the  superintendent 
that  the  firm  gave  a  "free  hand"  to  its 
artists,  "except  for  nudes,  improprie 
ties,  and  figures  of  people  smoking."  To 
these  last,  some  customers  —  even  cus 
tomers  of  the  sex  presumably  interested 
in  summer  suitings — "strongly  ob 
jected." 

The  new  school  of  English  fiction 
which  centres  about  the  tea-table,  and 
in  which,  as  in  the  land  of  the  lotus- 
eaters,  it  is  always  afternoon,  affords 
an  arena  for  conversation  and  an  easily 
210 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

procurable  atmosphere.  England  is  the 
second  home  of  tea.  She  waited  cen 
turies,  kettle  on  hob  and  cat  purring 
expectantly  by  the  fire,  for  the  coming 
of  that  sweet  boon,  and  she  welcomed  it 
with  the  generous  warmth  of  wisdom. 
No  duties  daunted  her.  No  price  was 
too  high  for  her  to  pay.  No  risk  was 
too  great  to  keep  her  from  smuggling 
the  "China  drink."  No  hearth  was  too 
humble  to  covet  it,  and  the  homeless 
brewed  it  by  the  roadside.  Isopel  Bern- 
ers,  that  peerless  and  heroic  tramp,  paid 
ten  shillings  a  pound  for  her  tea;  and 
when  she  lit  her  fire  in  the  Dingle,  com 
fort  enveloped  Lavengro,  and  he  tasted 
the  delights  of  domesticity. 

But  though  England  will  doubtless 
fight  like  a  lion  for  her  tea,  as  for  her 
cakes  and  ale,  when  bidden  to  purify 
herself  of  these  indulgences,  yet  it  is  the 
ale,  and  not  the  tea,  which  has  coloured 
her  masterful  literature.  There  are 
phrases  so  inevitable  that  they  defy 
211 


Points  of  Friction 

monotony.  Such  are  the  "wine-dark 
sea ' '  of  Greece,  and  the ' '  nut-brown  ale ' ' 
of  England.  Even  Lavengro,  though  he 
shared  Isopel's  tea,  gave  ale,  "the  true 
and  proper  drink  of  Englishmen,"  to 
the  wandering  tinker  and  his  family. 
How  else,  he  asks,  could  he  have  be 
friended  these  wretched  folk?  "There 
is  a  time  for  cold  water"  [this  is  a  gen 
erous  admission  on  the  writer's  part], 
"there  is  a  time  for  strong  meat,  there 
is  a  time  for  advice,  and  there  is  a  time 
for  ale;  and  I  have  generally  found  that 
the  time  for  advice  is  after  a  cup  of 
ale." 

"Lavengro"  has  been  called  the  epic 
of  ale;  but  Borrow  was  no  English 
rustic,  content  with  the  buxom  charms 
of  malt,  and  never  glancing  over  her 
fat  shoulder  to  wilder,  gayer  loves.  He 
was  an  accomplished  wanderer,  at  home 
with  all  men  and  with  all  liquor.  He 
could  order  claret  like  a  lord,  to  impress 
the  supercilious  waiter  in  a  London  inn. 

212 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

He  could  drink  Madeira  with  the  old 
gentleman  who  counselled  the  study  of 
Arabic,  and  the  sweet  wine  of  Cypress 
with  the  Armenian  who  poured  it  from 
a  silver  flask  into  a  silver  cup,  though 
there  was  nothing  better  to  eat  with  it 
than  dry  bread.  When,  harried  by  the 
spirit  of  militant  Protestantism,  he 
peddled  his  Bibles  through  Spain,  he 
dined  with  the  courteous  Spanish  and 
Portuguese  Gipsies,  and  found  that 
while  bread  and  cheese  and  olives  com 
prised  their  food,  there  was  always  a 
leathern  bottle  of  good  white  wine  to 
give  zest  and  spirit  to  the  meal.  He 
offered  his  brandy-flask  to  a  Genoese 
sailor,  who  emptied  it,  choking  horribly, 
at  a  draught,  so  as  to  leave  no  drop  for  a 
shivering  Jew  who  stood  by,  hoping  for 
a  turn.  Rather  than  see  the  Christian 
cavalier's  spirits  poured  down  a  Jewish 
throat,  explained  the  old  boatman 
piously,  he  would  have  suffocated. 
Englishmen  drank  malt  liquor  long 
213 


Points  of  Friction 

before  they  tasted  sack  or  canary.  The 
ale-houses  of  the  eighth  century  bear  a 
respectable  tradition  of  antiquity,  until 
we  remember  that  Egyptians  were 
brewing  barley  beer  four  thousand  years 
ago,  and  that  Herodotus  ascribes  its 
invention  to  the  ingenuity  and  benevo 
lence  of  Isis.  Thirteen  hundred  years 
before  Christ,  in  the  time  of  Seti  I,  an 
Egyptian  gentleman  complimented  Isis 
by  drinking  so  deeply  of  her  brew  that 
he  forgot  the  seriousness  of  life,  and  we 
have  to-day  the  record  of  his  unseemly 
gaiety.  Xenophon,  with  notable  lack  of 
enthusiasm,  describes  the  barley  beer  of 
Armenia  as  a  powerful  beverage,  "agree 
able  to  those  who  were  used  to  it";  and 
adds  that  it  was  drunk  out  of  a  common 
vessel  through  hollow  reeds,  —  a  com 
mendable  sanitary  precaution. 

In  Thomas  Hardy's  story,  "The  Shep 
herd's  Christening,"  there  is  a  rare  trib 
ute  paid  to  mead,  that  glorious  intoxi 
cant  which  our  strong-headed,  stout- 
214 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

hearted  progenitors  drank  unscathed. 
The  traditional  "heather  ale"  of  the 
Picts,  the  secret  of  which  died  with  the 
race,  was  a  glorified  mead. 

"Fra'  the  bonny  bells  o'  heather 

They  brewed  a  drink  lang-syne, 
'T  was  sweeter  far  than  honey, 
T  was  stronger  far  than  wine." 

The  story  goes  that,  after  the  bloody 
victory  of  the  Scots  under  Kenneth 
MacAlpine,  in  860,  only  two  Picts  who 
knew  the  secret  of  the  brew  survived 
the  general  slaughter.  Some  say  they 
were  father  and  son,  some  say  they 
were  master  and  man.  When  they  were 
offered  their  lives  in  exchange  for  the 
recipe,  the  older  captive  said  he  dared 
not  reveal  it  while  the  younger  lived, 
lest  he  be  slain  in  revenge.  So  the  Scots 
tossed  the  lad  into  the  sea,  and  waited 
expectantly.  Then  the  last  of  the  Picts 
cried,  "I  only  know!"  and  leaped  into 
the  ocean  and  was  drowned.  It  is  a 
brave  tale.  One  wonders  if  a  man  would 
215 


Points  of  Friction 

die  to  save  the  secret  of  making  milk- 
toast. 

From  the  pages  of  history  the  pro 
hibition-bred  youth  may  glean  much  off 
hand  information  about  the  wine  which 
the  wide  world  made  and  drank  at  every 
stage  of  civilization  and  decay.  If,  after 
the  fashion  of  his  kind,  he  eschews 
history,  there  are  left  to  him  ency 
clopaedias,  with  their  wealth  of  detail, 
and  their  paucity  of  intrinsic  realities. 
Antiquarians  also  may  be  trusted  to 
supply  a  certain  number  of  papers  on 
"leather  drinking- vessels,"  and  "toasts 
of  the  old  Scottish  gentry."  But  if  the 
youth  be  one  who  browses  un tethered 
in  the  lush  fields  of  English  literature, 
taking  prose  and  verse,  fiction  and  fact, 
as  he  strays  merrily  along,  what  will 
he  make  of  the  hilarious  company  in 
which  he  finds  himself?  What  of  Fal- 
staff,  and  the  rascal,  Autolycus,  and  of 
Sir  Toby  Belch,  who  propounded  the 
fatal  query  which  has  been  answered  in 
216 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

1919?  What  of  Herrick's  "joy-sops/* 
and  "cap ring  wine,"  and  that  simple 
and  sincere  ^"Thanksgiving"  hymn 
which  takes  cognizance  of  all  mercies? 

"Lord,  I  confess  too,  when  I  dine, 

The  pulse  is  thine, 
The  worts,  the  purslane,  and  the  mess 

Of  water-cress. 
T  is  Thou  that  crown'st  my  glittering  hearth 

With  guiltless  mirth, 
And  giv'st  me  wassail  bowls  to  drink, 

Spiced  to  the  brink." 

The  lines  sound  like  an  echo  of  Saint 
Chrysostom's  wise  warning,  spoken 
twelve  hundred  years  before:  "Wine  is 
for  mirth,  and  not  for  madness." 

Biographies,  autobiographies,  mem 
oirs,  diaries,  all  are  set  with  traps 
for  the  unwary,  and  all  are  alike  un 
conscious  of  offence.  Here  is  Dr.  John 
son,  whose  name  alone  is  a  tonic  for 
the  morally  debilitated,  saying  things 
about  claret,  port,  and  brandy  which 
bring  a  blush  to  the  cheek  of  temper 
ance.  Here  is  Scott,  that  "great  good 
217 


Points  of  Friction 

man"  and  true  lover  of  his  kind,  telling 
a  story  about  a  keg  of  whisky  and  a 
Liddesdale  farmer  which  one  hardly 
dares  to  allude  to,  and  certainly  dares 
not  repeat.  Here  is  Charles  Lamb, 
that  "frail  good  man,"  drinking  more 
than  is  good  for  him;  and  here  is 
Henry  Crabb  Robinson,  a  blameless, 
disillusioned,  prudent  sort  of  person, 
expressing  actual  regret  when  Lamb 
ceases  to  drink.  "His  change  of  habit, 
though  it  on  the  whole  improves  his 
health,  yet,  when  he  is  low-spirited, 
leaves  him  without  a  remedy  or  relief." 
John  Evelyn  and  Mr.  Pepys  witnessed 
the  blessed  Restoration,  when  England 
went  mad  with  joy,  and  the  fountains 
of  London  ran  wine. 

"A  very  merry,  dancing,  drinking, 
Laughing,  quaffing,  and  unthinking" 

time  it  was,  until  the  gilt  began  to  wear 
off  the  gingerbread.  But  Evelyn,  though 
he  feasted  as  became  a  loyal  gentleman, 
and  admitted  that  canary  carried  to  the 
218 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

West  Indies  and  back  for  the  good  of  its 
health  was  ''incomparably  fine,"  yet 
followed  Saint  Chrysostom's  counsel. 
He  drank,  and  compelled  his  household 
to  drink,  with  sobriety.  There  is  real 
annoyance  expressed  in  the  diary  when 
he  visits  a  hospitable  neighbour,  and 
his  coachman  is  so  well  entertained  in 
the  servants'  hall  that  he  falls  drunk 
from  the  box,  and  cannot  pick  himself 
up  again. 

Poor  Mr.  Pepys  was  ill  fitted  by  a 
churlish  fate  for  the  simple  pleasures 
that  he  craved.  To  him,  as  to  many 
another  Englishman,  wine  was  precious 
only  because  it  promoted  lively  con 
versation.  His  "debauches"  (it  pleased 
him  to  use  that  ominous  word)  were 
very  modest  ones,  for  he  was  at  all 
times  prudent  in  his  expenditures.  But 
claret  gave  him  a  headache,  and  Bur 
gundy  gave  him  the  stone,  and  late 
suppers,  even  of  bread  and  butter  and 
botargo,  gave  him  indigestion.  There- 
219 


Points  of  Friction 

fore  he  was  always  renouncing  the 
alleviations  of  life,  only  to  be  lured 
back  by  his  incorrigible  love  of  com 
panionship.  There  is  a  serio-comic 
quality  in  his  story  of  the  two  bottles 
of  wine  he  sent  for  to  give  zest  to  his 
cousin  Angier's  supper  at  the  Rose 
Tavern,  and  which  were  speedily  emp 
tied  by  his  cousin  Angier's  friends: 
"And  I  had  not  the  wit  to  let  them 
know  at  table  that  it  was  I  who  paid 
for  them,  and  so  I  lost  my  thanks." 

If  the  young  prohibitionist  be  light- 
hearted  enough  to  read  Dickens,  or 
imaginative  enough  to  read  Scott,  or 
sardonic  enough  to  read  Thackeray,  he 
will  find  everybody  engaged  in  the  great 
business  of  eating  and  drinking.  It 
crowds  love-making  into  a  corner,  be 
ing,  indeed,  a  pleasure  which  survives 
all  tender  dalliance,  and  restores  to  the 
human  mind  sanity  and  content.  I  am 
convinced  that  if  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
characters  ate  and  drank  more,  they 
220 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

would  be  less  obsessed  by  sex,  and  I 
wish  they  would  try  dining  as  a  re 
storative. 

The  older  novelists  recognized  this 
most  expressive  form  of  realism,  and 
knew  that,  to  be  accurate,  they  must 
project  their  minds  into  the  minds  of 
their  characters.  It  is  because  of  their 
sympathy  and  sincerity  that  we  recall 
old  Osborne's  eight-shilling  Madeira, 
and  Lord  Steyne's  White  Hermitage, 
which  Becky  gave  to  Sir  Pitt,  and  the 
brandy-bottle  clinking  under  her  bed 
clothes,  and  the  runlet  of  canary  which 
the  Holy  Clerk  of  Copmanhurst  found 
secreted  conveniently  in  his  cell,  and 
the  choice  purl  which  Dick  Swiveller 
and  the  Marchioness  drank  in  Miss 
Sally  Brass's  kitchen.  We  hear  War- 
rington's  great  voice  calling  for  beer, 
we  smell  the  fragrant  fumes  of  burning 
rum  and  lemon-peel  when  Mr.  Micawber 
brews  punch,  we  see  the  foam  on  the 
"Genuine  Stunning"  which  the  child 
221 


Points  of  Friction 

David  calls  for  at  the  public  house.  No 
writer  except  Peacock  treats  his  char 
acters,  high  and  low,  as  royally  as  does 
Dickens;  and  Peacock,  although  British 
publishers  keep  issuing  his  novels  in 
new  and  charming  editions,  is  little 
read  on  this  side  of  the  sea.  Moreover, 
he  is  an  advocate  of  strong  drink,  which 
is  very  reprehensible,  and  deprives  him 
of  candour  as  completely  as  if  he  had 
been  a  teetotaller.  We  feel  and  resent 
the  bias  of  his  mind;  and  although  he 
describes  with  humour  that  pleasant 
middle  period,  "after  the  Jacquerie 
were  down,  and  before  the  march  of 
mind  was  up,"  yet  the  only  one  of  his 
stories  which  is  innocent  of  specious- 
ness  is  "The  Misfortunes  of  Elphin." 

Now  to  the  logically  minded  "The 
Misfortunes  of  Elphin"  is  a  temperance 
tract.  The  disaster  which  ruins  the 
countryside  is  the  result  of  shameful 
drunkenness.  The  reproaches  levelled 
by  Prince  Elphin  at  Scithenyn  ap 
222 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

Seithyn  are  sterner  and  more  deeply 
deserved  than  the  reproaches  levelled  by 
King  Henry  at  Falstaff;  yet  the  tale 
rocks  and  reels  with  Seithenyn's  pota 
tions.  There  are  drunkards  whom  we 
can  conceive  of  as  sober,  but  he  is  not 
one  of  them.  There  are  sinners  who 
can  be  punished  or  pardoned,  but  he  is 
not  one  of  them.  As  he  is  incapable  of 
reform,  so  is  he  immune  from  retribu 
tion.  Out  of  the  dregs  of  his  folly  ooze 
the  slow  words  of  his  wisdom.  Nature 
befriends  him  because  he  is  a  natural 
force,  and  man  submits  to  him  because 
he  is  fulfilling  his  natural  election.  The 
good  and  the  wicked  fret  about  him, 
and  grow  old  in  the  troublesome  proc 
ess;  but  he  remains  unchangeably, 
immutably  drunk.  "Wine  is  my  medi 
cine,"  he  says  with  large  simplicity, 
"and  my  measure  is  a  little  more." 

If  ever  the  young  prohibitionist  strays 
into  the  wine-cellar  of  Seithenyn  ap 
Seithyn,  he  will  have  a  shell-shock.  It 
223 


Points  of  Friction 

may  even  be  that  his  presence  will  sour 
the  casks,  as  the  presence  of  a  woman 
is  reputed  to  sour  the  casks  in  the  great 
caves  of  the  Gironde,  where  wine 
ripens  slowly,  acquiring  merit  in  silence 
and  seclusion  like  a  Buddhist  saint, 
and  as  sensitive  as  a  Buddhist  saint  to 
the  perilous  proximity  of  the  feminine. 
This  ancient  and  reasonable  tradition 
is  but  one  phase  of  the  ancient  and 
reasonable  hostility  between  intoxicants 
and  the  sober  sex,  which  dates  perhaps 
from  the  time  when  Roman  women  were 
forbidden  to  taste  their  husbands'  wine, 
but  were  fed  on  sweet  syrups,  like  warm 
soda-fountain  beverages,  to  the  ruin  of 
their  health  and  spirits.  Small  wonder  if 
they  handed  down  to  their  great-grand 
daughters  a  legitimate  antagonism  to 
pleasures  they  were  not  permitted  to 
share,  and  if  their  remote  descendants 
still  cherish  a  dim,  resentful  conscious 
ness  of  hurt.  It  was  the  lurking  ghost 
of  a  dead  tyranny  which  impelled  an 
224 


The  Strayed  Prohibitionist 

American  woman  to  write  to  President 
Roosevelt,  reproving  him  for  having 
proposed  a  toast  to  Mr.  John  Hay's 
daughter  on  her  wedding-day.  "Think," 
she  said,  "of  the  effect  on  your  friends, 
on  your  children,  on  your  immortal 
soul,  of  such  a  thoughtless  act." 

Nomadic  tribes  —  the  vigilant  ones 
who  looked  well  ahead  —  wisely  forbade 
the  cultivation  of  the  vine.  Their 
leaders  knew  that  if  men  made  wine, 
they  would  want  to  stay  at  home  and 
drink  it.  The  prohibition-bred  youth, 
if  he  is  to  remain  faithful  to  the  cus 
toms  of  his  people,  had  better  not  culti 
vate  too  sedulously  the  great  literature, 
smelling  of  hop-fields,  and  saturated 
with  the  juice  of  the  grape.  Every  step 
of  the  way  is  distracting  and  dangerous. 
When  I  was  a  school-girl  I  was  authori 
tatively  bidden  —  only  authority  could 
have  impelled  me  —  to  strengthen  my 
errant  mind  by  reading  the  "  Areopagit- 
ica."  There  I  found  this  amazing  sen- 
225 


Points  of  Friction 

tence:  "They  are  not  skilful  considerers 
of  human  things  who  imagine  to  remove 
sin  by  removing  the  matter  of  sin." 
But  then  Milton  wrote  "L 'Allegro.11 


Money 

AS  the  world  is,  and  will  be,  't  is  a 
sort  of  duty  to  be  rich,"  wrote 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu ;  and  her 
words  —  which  sound  almost  ascetic 
in  our  ears  —  were  held  to  be  of  doubt 
ful  morality  in  the  godless  eighteenth 
century  which  she  adorned  and  typified. 
Even  Lady  Mary  endeavoured  to  qual 
ify  their  greed  by  explaining  that  she 
valued  money  because  it  gave  her  the 
power  to  do  good ;  but  her  hard-headed 
compatriots  frankly  doubted  this  ex 
cusatory  clause.  They  knew  perfectly 
well  that  a  desire  to  do  good  is  not,  and 
never  has  been,  a  motive  power  in  the 
acquisition  of  wealth. 

Lady   Mary  did   render  her  coun 
try  one  inestimable  service;  but  her 
fortune   (which,   after  all,   was  of  no 
great  magnitude)  had  nothing  whatever 
227 


Points  of  Friction 

to  do  with  it.  Intelligent  observation, 
dauntless  courage,  and  the  supreme 
confidence  which  nerved  her  to  ex 
periment  upon  her  own  child,  —  these 
qualities  enabled  her  to  force  inoculation 
upon  a  reluctant  and  scandalized  pub 
lic.  These  qualities  have  lifted  man 
kind  out  of  many  a  rut,  and  are  all  we 
shall  have  to  depend  on  while  the  world 
rolls  on  its  way.  When  Aristotle  said 
that  money  was  barren,  he  did  not  mean 
that  it  was  barren  of  delights;  but  that 
it  had  no  power  to  get  us  to  any  place 
worth  reaching,  no  power  to  quicken 
the  intellectual  and  spiritual  potencies 
of  the  soul. 

The  love  of  gold,  the  craving  for 
wealth,  has  not  lain  dormant  for  ages 
in  the  human  heart,  waiting  for  the 
twentieth  century  to  call  it  into  being. 
It  is  no  keener  now  than  it  has  always 
been,  but  it  is  ranker  in  its  growth  and 
expression,  being  a  trifle  over-nourished 
in  our  plethoric  land,  and  not  subjected 
228 


Money 


to  keen  competing  emotions.  Great 
waves  of  religious  thought,  great  strug 
gles  for  principles  and  freedom,  great 
births  of  national  life,  great  discoveries, 
great  passions,  and  great  wrongs,  — - 
these  things  have  swayed  the  world, 
wrecking  and  saving  the  souls  of  men 
without  regard  for  money.  Great  quali 
ties,  too,  have  left  their  impress  upon 
the  human  race,  and  endowed  it  for  all 
the  years  to  come. 

The  genius  which  in  the  thirteenth 
century  found  expression  in  archi 
tecture  and  scholasticism,  which  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
found  expression  in  art  and  letters,  finds 
expression  to-day  in  applied  science 
and  finance.  Industrial  capitalism,  as 
we  know  it  now,  is  the  latest  develop 
ment  of  man's  restless  energy.  It  has 
coloured  our  times,  given  us  new  values 
in  education,  and  intruded  itself  grossly 
into  the  quiet  places  of  life.  We  should 
bear  with  it  patiently,  we  might  even 
229 


Points  of  Friction 

"admire  it  from  afar/'  if  only  we  were 
sometimes  suffered  to  forget.  "Money 
talks,"  and,  by  way  of  encouraging  its 
garrulity,  we  talk  about  money,  and  in 
terms  of  money,  until  it  would  some 
times  appear  as  if  the  currency  of  the 
United  States  were  the  only  thing  in  the 
country  vital  enough  to  interpret  every 
endeavour,  and  illustrate  every  situa 
tion. 

Here,  for  example,  is  an  imposing  pic 
ture  in  a  Sunday  paper,  a  picture  full  of 
dignified  ecclesiastics  and  decorous  spec- 
tators.The  text  reads, "  Breaking  ground 
for  a  three-million-dollar  nave."  It  is  a 
comprehensive  statement,  and  one  that 
conveys  to  the  public  the  only  circum 
stance  which  the  public  presumably 
cares  to  hear.  But  it  brings  a  great 
cathedral  down  to  the  level  of  the  mil 
lion-dollar  club-houses,  or  boat-houses, 
or  fishing-camps  which  are  described 
for  us  in  unctuous  and  awe-stricken 
paragraphs.  It  is  even  dimly  suggestive 
230 


Money 


of  the  million-dollar  babies  whom  re 
porters  follow  feverishly  up  and  down 
Palm  Beach,  and  who  will  soon  have  to 
be  billion-dollar  babies  if  they  want  to 
hold  their  own.  We  are  now  on  terms 
of  easy  familiarity  with  figures  which 
used  to  belong  to  the  abstractions  of 
arithmetic,  and  not  to  the  world  of  life. 
We  have  become  proudly  aware  of  the 
infinite  possibilities  of  accumulation  and 
of  waste. 

For  this  is  the  ebb  and  flow  of  Ameri 
can  wealth.  It  is  heaped  up  with  resist 
less  energy  and  concentration ;  it  is  dis 
sipated  in  broken  and  purposeless  pro 
fusion.  Every  class  resents  the  extrava 
gance  of  every  other  class;  but  none  will 
practise  denial.  The  millionaire  who 
plays  with  a  yacht  and  decks  his  wife 
with  pearls  looks  askance  upon  the  motor 
and  silk  shirt  of  the  artisan.  The  artisan, 
with  impulses  and  ambitions  as  ignoble 
and  as  unintelligent  as  the  millionaire's, 
is  sullenly  aware  that,  waste  as  he  may, 
231 


Points  of  Friction 

the  rich  can  waste  more,  and  he  is  still  ' 
dissatisfied.  There  is  no  especial  appeal 
to  manhood  in  a  silk  shirt,  no  approach 
to  sweetness  and  light.  It  represents  an 
ape-like  imitation  of  something  not 
worth  imitating,  a  hopeless  ignorance 
of  the  value  and  worth  of  money. 

A  universal  reluctance  to  practise 
economy  indicates  a  weakness  in  the 
moral  fibre  of  a  nation,  a  dangerous 
absence  of  pride.  There  is  no  power  of  the 
soul  strong  enough  to  induce  thrift  but 
pride.  There  is  no  quality  stern  enough 
to  bar  self-indulgence  but  the  over 
mastering  dictates  of  self-respect.  There 
is  no  joy  that  life  can  yield  comparable 
to  the  joy  of  independence.  A  nation  is 
free  when  it  submits  to  coercion  from 
no  other  nation.  A  man  is  free  when  he 
is  the  arbiter  of  his  own  fate.  National 
and  individual  freedom  have  never 
come  cheap.  The  sacrifice  which  in 
sures  the  one  insures  the  other;  the 
resolution  which  preserves  the  one  pre- 
232 


Money 

serves  the  other.  When  Andrew  Mar- 
veil  declined  the  bribe  offered  him 
"out  of  pure  affection"  by  the  Lord 
Treasurer,  saying  he  had  "a  blade- 
bone  of  mutton"  in  his  cupboard  which 
would  suffice  for  dinner,  he  not  only 
held  his  own  honour  inviolate,  but  he 
vindicated  the  liberty  of  letters,  the 
liberty  of  Parliament,  and  the  liberty  of 
England.  No  wonder  an  old  chronicler 
says  that  his  integrity  and  spirit  were 
" dreadful"  to  the  corrupt  officials  of 
his  day. 

There  are  Americans  who  appear  to 
love  their  country  for  much  the  same 
reason  that  Stevenson's  "child"  loves 
the  "friendly  cow": 

"She  gives  me  cream  with  all  her  might 
To  eat  with  apple  tart." 

When  the  supply  of  cream  runs  short, 
the  patriot's  love  runs  shorter.  He  holds 
virulent  mass-meetings  to  complain  of 
the  cow,  of  the  quality  of  the  cream,  and 
of  its  distribution.  If  he  be  an  immigrant, 
233 


Points  of  Friction 

he  probably  riots  in  the  streets,  not 
clamouring  for  the  flesh-pots  of  Egypt— 
that  immemorial  cry  for  ease  and  bond 
age  —  inasmuch  as  the  years  of  his 
thraldom  had  been  softened  by  no  such 
indulgence;  but  simply  because  the 
image  of  the  cow  is  never  absent  from 
his  mind,  or  from  the  minds  of  those  to 
whom  he  looks  for  guidance.  The  cap  tain 
of  industry  and  the  agitator,  the  spend 
thrift  and  the  spendthrift's  wife  who 
fling  their  money  ostentatiously  to  the 
four  winds  of  heaven,  the  working-man 
and  the  working-woman  who  exact  the 
largest  wage  for  the  least  labour,  all  are 
actuated  by  the  same  motive,  —  to  get 
as  much  and  to  give  as  little  as  they  can. 
It  is  not  a  principle  which  makes  for 
citizenship,  and  it  will  afford  no  great 
help  in  the  hour  of  the  nation's  trial. 
Material  progress  and  party  politics  are 
engrossing  things;  but  perhaps  Francis 
Parkman  was  right  when  he  said  that  if 
our  progress  is  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  our 
234 


Money 

politics,  and  our  politics  at  the  mercy 
of  our  mobs,  we  shall  have  no  lasting 
foundation  for  prosperity  and  well- 
being. 

The  tendency  to  gloat  over  the  sight 
and  sound  of  money  may  be  less  per 
vasive  than  it  seems.  It  may  be  only  a 
temporary  predisposition,  leaving  us  at 
heart  clean,  wise,  and  temperate.  But 
there  is  a  florid  exuberance  in  the  han 
dling  of  this  recurrent  theme  which  nau 
seates  us  a  little,  like  very  rich  food 
eaten  in  a  close  room.  Why  should  we 
be  told  that ' '  the  world  gapes  in  wonder  " 
as  it  contemplates  "an  Aladdin  romance 
of  steel  and  gold"?  The  world  has  had 
other  things  to  gape  over  in  these  sor 
rowful  and  glorious  years.  "  Once  a  bare 
foot  boy,  now  riding  in  a  hundred-thou 
sand-dollar  private  car."  There  is  a  head 
line  to  catch  the  public  eye,  and  make 
the  public  tongue  hang  watering  from 
its  mouth.  That  car,  "early  Pullman 
and  late  German  Lloyd,"  is  to  the 
235 


Points  of  Friction 

American  reader  what  the  two  thousand 
black  slaves  with  jars  of  jewels  upon  their 
heads  were  to  Dick  Swiveller,  —  a  vision 
of  tasteful  opulence.  More  intimate 
journalists  tell  us  that  a  "Financial 
Potentate"  eats  baked  potatoes  for  his 
luncheon,  and  gives  his  friends  note 
books  with  a  moral  axiom  on  each  page. 
We  cannot  really  care  what  this  un 
known  gentleman  eats.  We  cannot, 
under  any  conceivable  circumstance, 
covet  a  moral  notebook.  Yet  such  items 
of  information  would  not  be  painstak 
ingly  acquired  unless  they  afforded  some 
mysterious  gratification  to  their  readers. 
As  for  the  "athletic  millionaires," 
who  sport  in  the  open  like  —  and  often 
with  —  ordinary  men,  they  keep  their 
chroniclers  nimble.  Fashions  in  plutoc 
racy  change  with  the  changing  times. 
The  reporter  who  used  to  be  turned 
loose  in  a  nabob's  private  office,  and 
who  rapturously  described  its  "ebony 
centre-table  on  which  is  laid  a  costly 
236 


Money 

cover  of  maroon-coloured  silk  plush," 
and  its  panelled  walls,  "the  work  of 
a  lady  amateur  of  great  ability"  (I 
quote  from  a  newspaper  of  1890),  now 
has  to  scurry  round  golf-links,  and 
shiver  on  the  outskirts  of  a  polo-field. 
From  him  we  learn  that  young  New 
Yorkers,  the  least  and  lowest  of  whom 
lives  in  a  nine-hundred-thousand-dol 
lar  house,  play  tennis  and  golf  like 
champions,  or  "cut  a  wide  swathe  in 
polo  circles  with  their  fearless  riding." 
From  him  we  learn  that  "automobile 
racing  can  show  its  number  of  million 
aires,"  as  if  it  were  at  all  likely  to  show 
its  number  of  clerks  and  ploughmen. 
Extravagance  may  be  the  arch-enemy 
of  efficiency,  but  it  is,  and  has  always 
been,  the  friend  of  aimless  excess. 

When  I  was  young,  and  millionaires 
were  a  rarity  in  my  unassuming  town, 
a  local  divine  fluttered  our  habitual 
serenity  by  preaching  an  impassioned 
sermon  upon  a  local  Croesus.  He  was 
237 


Points  of  Friction 

but  a  moderate  sort  of  Croesus,  a  man 
of  kindly  nature  and  simple  vanities, 
whom   his   townspeople  had   been    in 
the  habit  of  regarding  with  mirthful 
and  tolerant  eyes.  Therefore  it  was  a 
bit  startling  to  hear  —  from  the  pulpit 
—  that  this  amiable  gentleman  was  "a 
crown  of  glory  upon  the  city's  brow," 
and    that    his    name    was    honoured 
"from  the  Golden  Gate  to  New  Jer 
sey's  silver  sands."    It  was  more  than 
startling  to  be  called  upon  to  admire 
the  meekness  with  which  he  trod  the 
common    earth,    and    the    unhesitat 
ing  affability  with  which  he  bowed  to 
all  his  acquaintances,  "acknowledging 
every   salute   of   civility   or   respect," 
because,    "like   another    Frederick    II 
of  Prussia,"  he  felt  his  fellow-citizens 
to  be  human  beings  like  himself.  This 
admission  into  the  ranks  of  humanity, 
however  gratifying  to  our  self-esteem, 
was  tempered    by   so   many  exhorta 
tions  to  breathe  our  millionaire's  name 

238 


Money 

with  becoming  reverence,  and  was  ac 
companied  by  such  a  curious  medley  of 
Bible  texts,  and  lists  of  distinguished 
people  whom  the  millionaire  had  en 
tertained,  that  we  hardly  knew  where 
we  stood  in  the  order  of  creation. 

Copies  of  this  sermon,  which  was 
printed  "in  deference  to  many  im 
portunities,"  are  now  extremely  rare. 
Reading  its  yellow  pages,  we  become 
aware  that  the  rites  and  ceremonies 
with  which  one  generation  worships  its 
golden  calf  differ  in  detail  from  the 
rites  and  ceremonies  with  which  another 
generation  performs  this  pious  duty. 
The  calf  itself  has  never  changed  since 
it  was  first  erected  in  the  wilderness, 
—  the  original  model  hardly  admitting 
of  improvement.  Ruskin  used  to  point 
out  gleefully  a  careless  couple  who,  in 
Claude 's  picture  of  the  adoration  of  the 
golden  calf,  are  rowing  in  a  pleasure 
boat  on  a  stream  which  flows  mysteri 
ously  through  the  desert.  Indifferent  to 
239 


Points  of  Friction 

gold,  uninterested  in  idolatry,  this  pair 
glide  smoothly  by;  and  perhaps  the 
river  of  time  bears  them  through  cen 
turies  of  greed  and  materialism  to  some 
hidden  haven  of  repose. 

Saint  Thomas  Aquinas  defines  the 
sin  of  avarice  as  a  "desire  to  acquire  or 
retain  in  undue  measure,  beyond  the 
order  of  reason."  Possibly  no  one  has 
ever  believed  that  he  committed  this 
sin,  that  there  was  anything  unreason 
able  in  his  desires,  or  undue  in  their 
measure  of  accomplishment.  "Reason" 
is  a  word  of  infinite  flexibility.  The  stat 
isticians  who  revel  in  mathematical 
intricacies  tell  us  that  Mr.  John  D. 
Rockefeller's  income  is  one  hundred 
dollars  a  minute,  and  that  his  yearly 
income  exceeds  the  lifetime  earnings  of 
two  thousand  average  American  citizens, 
and  is  equivalent  to  the  income  of  fifty 
average  American  citizens  sustained 
throughout  the  entire  Christian  era.  It 
sounds  more  bewildering  than  seductive, 
240 


Money 


and  the  breathless  rush  of  a  hundred 
dollars  a  minute  is  a  little  like  the 
seven  dinners  a  day  which  Alice  in 
Wonderland  stands  ready  to  forego 
as  a  welcome  punishment  for  misbe 
haviour.  But  who  shall  say  that  a 
hundred  dollars  a  minute  is  beyond  the 
"order  of  reason"?  Certainly  Saint 
Thomas  did  not  refer  to  incomes  of 
this  range,  inasmuch  as  his  mind 
(though  not  without  a  quality  of 
vastness)  could  never  have  embraced 
their  possibility. 

On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Rockefeller 
is  responsible  for  the  suggestion  that 
Saint  Paul,  were  he  living  to-day,  would 
be  a  captain  of  industry.  Here  again  a 
denial  is  as  valueless  as  an  assertion.  It 
is  much  the  habit  of  modern  propagan 
dists  —  no  matter  what  their  propa 
ganda  may  be  —  to  say  that  the  gap  be 
tween  themselves  and  the  Apostles  is 
merely  a  gap  of  centuries,  and  that  the 
unlikeness,  which  seems  to  us  so  vivid, 
241 


Points  of  Friction 

is  an  unlikeness  of  time  and  circum 
stance,  not  of  the  inherent  qualities  of 
the  soul.  The  multiplication  of  assets, 
the  destruction  of  trade-rivalry,  formed 
-  apparently  —  no  part  of  the  original 
apostolic  programme.  If  the  tent-maker 
of  Tarsus  coveted  wealth,  he  certainly 
went  the  wrong  way  about  getting  it. 
If  there  was  that  in  his  spirit  which  cor 
responded  to  the  modern  instinct  for 
accumulation,  he  did  great  injustice  to 
his  talents,  wasting  his  incomparable 
energy  on  labours  which  —  from  his 
own  showing  —  left  him  too  often  home 
less,  and  naked,  and  hungry.  Even  the 
tent-making,  by  which  he  earned  his 
bread,  appears  to  have  been  valuable  to 
him  for  the  same  reason  that  the  blade- 
bone  of  mutton  was  valuable  to  Andrew 
Marvell,  —  not  so  much  because  it 
filled  his  stomach,  as  because  it  insured 
his  independence. 

"  L 'amour  d' argent  a  passe  en  dogme  de 
morale  publique,"  wrote  George  Sand, 
242 


Money 

whose  words  have  now  and  then  a 
strange  prophetic  ring.  The  "peril  of 
prosperity,"  to  borrow  President  Hib- 
ben's  alliterative  phrase,  was  not  in  her 
day  the  menace  it  is  in  ours,  nor  has  it 
ever  been  in  her  land  the  menace  it  has 
been  in  ours,  because  of  the  many  other 
perils,  not  to  speak  of  other  interests 
and  other  ideals,  filling  the  Frenchman's 
mind.  But  if  George  Sand  perceived  a 
growing  candour  in  the  deference  paid 
to  wealth,  to  wealth  as  an  abstraction 
rather  than  to  its  possessor,  a  dropping 
of  the  old  hypocrisies  which  made  a  pre 
tence  of  doubt  and  disapproval,  a  devel 
opment  of  honoured  and  authorized 
avarice,  she  was  a  close  observer  as  well 
as  a  caustic  commentator. 

The  artlessness  of  our  American  atti 
tude  might  disarm  criticism  were  any 
thing  less  than  public  sanity  at  stake. 
We  appeal  simply  and  robustly  to  the 
love  of  gain,  and  we  seldom  appeal  in 
vain.  It  is  not  only  that  education  has 
243 


Points  of  Friction 

substituted  the  principle  of  getting  on 
for  less  serviceable  values;  but  we  are 
bidden  to  purchase  marketable  knowl 
edge,  no  less  than  marketable  food 
stuffs,  as  an  easy  avenue  to  fortune.  If 
we  will  eat  and  drink  the  health-giving 
comestibles  urged  upon  us,  our  improved 
digestions  will  enable  us  to  earn  larger 
incomes.  If  we  will  take  a  highly  com 
mended  course  of  horse-shoeing  or 
oratorio-writing,  prosperity  will  be  our 
immediate  reward.  If  we  will  buy  some 
excellent  books  of  reference,  they  will 
teach  us  to  grow  rich. 

"There  are  one  thousand  more  mil 
lionaires  in  the  United  States  than  there 
were  ten  years  ago,"  say  the  purveyors 
of  these  volumes.  "At  the  present  rate 
of  increase,  the  new  millionaires  in  the 
next  few  years  will  be  at  least  twelve 
hundred.  Will  you  be  one  of  them?" 
There  is  a  question  to  ask  a  young 
American  at  the  outset  of  his  career! 
There  is  an  incentive  to  study!  And  by 
244 


Money 

way  of  elucidating  a  somewhat  doubt 
ful  situation,  the  advertisers  go  on  to 
say:  "Typical  men  of  brains  are  those 
who  have  dug  large  commercial  enter 
prises  out  of  a  copper  mine,  or  trans 
formed  buying  and  selling  into  an  art. 
You  must  take  a  leaf  from  the  experi 
ence  of  such  men  if  you  would  hold 
positions  of  responsibility  and  power." 
Just  how  the  reference  books  —  chill 
avenues  of  universal  erudition  —  are 
going  to  give  us  control  of  a  copper  mine 
or  of  a  department  store  is  not  made 
clear;  but  their  vendors  know  that  there 
is  no  use  in  offering  anything  less  than 
wealth,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes  spelled, 
"success,"  as  a  return  for  the  price  of 
the  volumes.  And  if  a  tasteful  border 
design  of  fat  money-bags  scattering  a 
cascade  of  dollars  fails  to  quicken  the 
sales,  there  is  no  tempting  the  heart  of 
man.  Our  covetousness  is  as  simple  and 
as  easily  played  upon  as  was  the  covet 
ousness  of  the  adventurers  who  went 
245 


Points  of  Friction 

digging  for  buried  treasures  on  the 
unimpeachable  authority  of  a  sooth 
sayer.  The  testimony  offered  in  a  New 
Jersey  court  that  a  man  had  bought 
some  farmland  because  the  spirit  of  a 
young  negro  girl  had  indicated  that 
there  was  money  hidden  beneath  the 
soil;  the  arraignment  before  a  Brooklyn 
magistrate  of  two  Gipsy  women,  charged 
with  stealing  the  cash  they  had  been 
commissioned  to  "bless,"  are  proof,  if 
proof  were  needed,  that  intelligence  has 
not  kept  pace  with  cupidity. 

The  endless  stories  about  messenger 
boys  and  elevator  men  who  have  been 
given  a  Wall  Street "  tip,"  and  who  have 
become  capitalists  in  a  day,  are  aston 
ishingly  like  the  stories  which  went  their 
round  when  the  South-Sea  Bubble  hung 
iridescent  over  London.  Mankind  has 
never  wearied  of  such  tales  since  Alad 
din  (one  of  Fortune's  fools)  won  his 
easy  way  to  wealth.  Even  the  old  dime 
novel  with  "Dare-Devil  Dick," or  " Jas- 
246 


Money 

per,  the  Boy  Detective,'*  for  a  hero,  has 
been  transmogrified  into  a  "Fame  and 
Fortune,"  series,  with  "Boys  That 
Make  Money,"  figuring  vaingloriously 
on  the  title-page.  Gone  is  the  Indian 
brave,  the  dauntless  young  seaman  who 
saved  the  American  navy,  the  calm- 
eyed  lad  who  held  up  a  dozen  masked 
ruffians  with  one  small  pistol.  In  their 
place  we  have  the  boy  in  the  broker's 
office  who  finds  out  that  "A.  and  C." 
stock  will  double  its  value  within  ten 
days;  or  the  exploits  of  a  group  of  juve 
nile  speculators,  who  form  a  "secret 
syndicate,"  and  outwit  the  wisest  heads 
on  Wall  Street.  The  supremacy  of  youth 
—  a  vital  feature  of  such  fiction  —  is  in 
dicated  when  the  inspired  messenger 
boy  gives  a  "pointer"  to  an  old  and  in 
fluential  firm  of  brokers,  who  receive  it 
with  glistening  eyes  and  respectful  grati 
tude.  "I  did  not  tip  you  in  expectation 
of  any  compensation,"  observes  the 
magnanimous  and  up-to-date  young 
247 


Points  of  Friction 

hero.  "I  simply  felt  it  was  my  duty  to 
prevent  you  from  losing  the  profit  that 
was  bound  to  come  your  way  if  you  held 
on  a  few  days  longer." 

Our  newspapers  have  told  us  (we 
should  like  to  know  who  told  the  news 
papers)  that  high  prices  are  popular 
prices.  It  is  fitting  and  proper  that  peo 
ple  who  own  the  wealth  of  the  world 
should  pay  a  great  deal  for  everything 
they  buy.  Shoppers  with  their  purses 
full  of  money  are  affronted  by  any  hint 
of  cheapness  or  economy.  This  may  be 
true,  though  it  reminds  me  a  little  of  a 
smiling  Neapolitan  who  once  assured 
me  that  his  donkey  liked  to  be  beaten. 
One  cannot,  without  entering  into  the 
mind  of  a  donkey  or  of  a  rich  American, 
deny  the  tastes  imputed  to  them;  but 
one  may  cherish  doubts.  It  is  true  that 
"record  prices"  have  been  paid  for 
every  luxury,  that  the  sales  of  furriers 
and  jewellers  have  been  unprecedented 
in  the  annals  of  our  commerce,  that  the 

248 


Money 

eager  buying  of  rare  books,  pictures, 
and  curios,  flung  on  the  markets  by  the 
destitution  of  Europe,  has  never  been 
surpassed.  One  might  wish  that  desti 
tution  anywhere  (Vienna  is  not  so  far 
from  New  York  that  no  cry  of  pain  can 
reach  us)  would  dim  our  pleasure  in 
such  purchases.  This  does  not  seem  to 
be  the  case.  "Tis  man's  perdition  to 
be  safe,"  and  't  is  his  deepest  and  dead 
liest  perdition  to  profit  by  the  misfor 
tunes  of  others. 

An  American  rhapsodist,  singing  the 
paean  of  money  in  the  pages  ot  the 
"  Bankers'  Magazine,"  says  in  its  mighty 
name:  "  I  am  the  minister  of  war  and  the 
messenger  of  peace.  No  army  can  march 
without  my  command.  Until  I  speak, 
no  ship  of  trade  can  sail  from  any  port." 

"Until  I  speak"!  Always  the  empha 
sis  upon  that  powerful  voice  which  is  so 
mute  and  inglorious  without  the  com 
pelling  mind  of  man.  When  President 
Cleveland  said  that  if  it  took  every  dol- 
249 


Points  of  Friction 

lar  in  the  Treasury,  and  every  soldier 
in  the  United  States  army,  to  deliver  a 
postal  card  in  Chicago,  that  postal  card 
should  be  delivered,  he  was  perhaps  glad 
to  think  that  the  nation's  wealth,  like 
the  nation's  force,  could  be  used  to  ful 
fil  the  nation's  obligations.  But  back  of 
wealth,  and  back  of  force,  was  purpose. 
When  man  lays  hand  upon  the  "hilt  of 
action,"  money  stops  talking  and  obeys. 
Mr.   Shane   Leslie,    shrinking   sensi 
tively  from  that  oppressive  word,  "effi 
ciency,"  and  seeking  what  solace  he  can 
find  in  the  survival  of  unpractical  ideals, 
ventures  to  say  that  every  university 
man  "carries  away  among  the  husks  of 
knowledge  the  certainty  that  there  are 
less  things  saleable  in  heaven  and  earth 
than  the  advocates  of  sound  commer 
cial   education   would    suppose."   This 
truth,    more    simply    phrased    by    the 
Breton   peasant  woman  who  said  "Le 
bon  Dieu  ne  vend  pas  ses  biens,"  has 
other  teachers  besides  religion  and  the 
250 


Money 

classics.  History,  whether  we  read  it  or 
live  in  it,  makes  nothing  clearer.  Mr. 
Henry  Ford  is  credited  with  saying  that 
he  would  not  give  a  nickel  for  all  the 
history  in  the  world ;  but  though  he  can, 
and  does,  forbear  to  read  it,  he  has  to 
live  in  it  with  the  rest  of  us,  and  learn 
its  lessons  first-hand.  No  one  desired  the 
welfare  —  or  what  he  conceived  to  be 
the  welfare  —  of  mankind  more  sin 
cerely  than  he  did ;  and  he  was  prepared 
to  buy  it  at  a  handsome  figure.  Yet 
Heaven  refused  to  sell,  and  earth,  inas 
much  as  the  souls  of  men  are  not  her 
possessions,  had  nothing  worth  his  pur 
chase. 

The  price  of  war  can  be  computed  in 
figures;  the  price  of  peace  calls  for  an 
other  accountant.  The  tanker,  Gold 
Shell,  which  first  crossed  the  ''forbid 
den"  zone  did  more  than  a  score  of 
peace  ships  could  have  done  to  secure 
the  civilization  of  the  world.  Its  plain 
sailors  who  put  something  (I  don't 
251 


Points  of  Friction 

know  what  they  called  it)  above  per 
sonal  safety,  and  their  plain  captain 
who  expressed  in  the  regrettable  lan 
guage  of  the  sea  his  scorn  of  German 
pirates,  were  prepared  to  pay  a  higher 
price  £han  any  millionaire  could  offer 
for  their  own  and  their  country's  free 
dom.  We  know  what  these  men  risked 
because  we  know  what  agonizing  deaths 
the  sailors  on  the  tanker,  Healdton,  suf 
fered  at  Germany's  hands.  The  Gold 
Shell  seamen  knew  it  too,  and  met  fright- 
fulness  with  fearlessness.  The  world  is 
never  so  bad  but  that  men's  souls  can 
rise  above  its  badness,  and  restore  our 
fainting  faith. 

Mohammed  prayed  that  he  might  be 
found  among  the  poor  on  the  Judgment 
Day,  —  a  prayer  echoed  by  Saint  Ber 
nard,  who  took  some  pains  to  insure  its 
being  answered.  Yet,  as  a  mere  abstrac 
tion,  of  what  worth  is  poverty?  The 
jewel  in  the  toad's  head  is  as  glittering 
as  adversity  is  sweet.  One  has  been  well 
252 


Money 

likened  to  the  other.  Bishop  Lawrence, 
undismayed  by  the  most  humiliating 
page  of  our  country's  history,  seized  a 
crucial  moment  in  which  to  say  very 
simply  and  gallantly  that  Americans 
are  not  wedded  to  ease,  or  enthralled  by 
wealth.  The  time  has  come  to  prove 
him  in  the  right.  God  will  not  sell  us 
safety.  We  learned  this  much  in  the 
winter  of  1917,  when  we  dug  our  mail 
out  of  an  American  steamer,  and  asked 
Britain  —  Britain  burdened  with  debt 
and  bleeding  at  every  pore  —  to  carry 
it  over  the  sea.  For  our  own  sake,  no 
less  than  for  the  world's  sake,  we  must 
show  that  we  coin  money  in  no  base 
spirit,  that  we  cherish  it  with  no  base 
passion.  The  angel  who  looked  too  long 
at  heaven's  golden  pavement  was  flung 
into  hell. 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

THE  unhallowed  alliance  between 
the  cruelty  that  we  hate  and  the 
humour  that  we  prize  is  a  psychological 
problem  which  frets  the  candid  mind. 
Hazlitt  analyzed  it  pitilessly,  but  with 
out  concern,  because  humanity  was  not 
his  playing  card.  No  writer  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  dared  to  be  so  clearly 
and  consciously  inhumane  as  was  Haz 
litt.  Shakespeare  and  Scott  recognized 
this  alliance,  and  were  equally  uncon 
cerned,  because  they  accepted  life  on  its 
own  terms,  and  were  neither  the  sport 
of  illusions  nor  the  prey  of  realities.  It 
took  the  public  —  always  more  or  less 
kind-hearted  —  two  hundred  years  to 
sympathize  with  the  wrongs  of  Shy- 
lock,  and  three  hundred  years  to  wince 
at  the  misery  of  Malvolio. 

It  was  with  something  akin  to  regret 
254 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

that  Andrew  Lang  watched  the  shriv 
elling  of  that  " full-blown  comic  sense" 
which  accompanied  the  cruel  sports  of 
an  earlier  generation,  the  bull-baiting 
and  badger-drawing  and  cock-fights  and 
prize-fights  which   Englishmen   loved, 
and  which  taught  them  to  value  cour 
age  and  look  unmoved  on  pain.  In  1699 
the  old  East  India  Company  lost  its 
claim  against  the  New  Company  by  two 
parliamentary  votes;  and  this  measure 
was  passed  in  the  absence  of  friendly 
members  who  had  been  seduced  from 
their  posts  by  the  unwonted  spectacle 
of  a  tiger-baiting.    In  1818  Christopher 
North  (black  be  his  memory!)  described 
graphically  and  with  smothered  glee  the 
ignoble  game   of   cat-worrying,   which 
ran  counter  to  British  sporting  instincts, 
to   the   roughly   interpreted   fair   play 
which  severed  brutality  from  baseness. 
There  was  never  a  time  when  some  Eng 
lish   voice  was  not   raised   to   protest 
against  that  combination  of  cruelty  and 
255 


Points  of  Friction 

cowardice  which  pitted  strength  against 
weakness,  or  overwhelming  odds  against 
pure  gallantry  of  spirit.  The  first  Eng 
lishman  to  assert  that  animals  had  a 
right  to  legal  protection  was  John  Eve 
lyn.  He  grasped  this  novel  point  of 
view  through  sheer  horror  and  disgust 
because  a  stallion  had  been  baited  with 
dogs  in  London,  and  had  fought  so 
bravely  that  the  dogs  could  not  fasten 
on  him  until  the  men  in  charge  ran  him 
through  with  their  swords.  Evelyn 
asked,  and  asked  in  vain,  that  the  law 
should  intervene  to  punish  such  bar 
barity. 

A  century  later  we  hear  the  same 
cry  of  indignation,  the  same  appeal  for 
pity  and  redress.  This  time  it  comes 
from  Horace  Walpole,  who  is  beside 
himself  with  fury  because  some  scoun 
drels  at  Dover  had  roasted  a  fox  alive, 
to  mark  —  with  apt  symbolism  —  their 
disapproval  of  Charles  Fox.  Walpole, 
whom  Lord  Minto  characterized  as 
256 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

"a  prim,  precise,  pretending,  conceited 
savage,  but  a  most  un-English  one," 
demonstrated  on  this  occasion  the  alien 
nature  of  his  sympathies  by  an  out 
break  of  rage  against  the  cruelty  which 
he  was  powerless  to  punish.  It  is  inter 
esting  to  note  that  he  denounced  the 
deed  as  "a  savage  meanness  which  an 
Iroquois  would  have  scorned" ;  showing 
that  he  and  Lord  Minto  regarded  sav 
agery  from  different  angles.  So,  it  will 
be  remembered,  did  Lord  Byron  and 
Izaak  Walton.  When  the  former  dared 
to  call  the  latter  "  a  sentimental  savage," 
he  brought  down  upon  his  own  head, 
"bloody  but  unbowed,"  the  wrath  of 
British  sportsmen,  of  British  church 
men,  of  British  sensibility.  Even  in 
far-off  America  an  outraged  editor 
protested  shrilly  against  this  monde 
bestorne,  this  sudden  onslaught  of  vice 
upon  virtue,  this  reversal  of  outlawry 
and  order. 

The  effrontery  of  the  attack  startled 
257 


Points  of  Friction 

a  decorous  world.  Lord  Byron  had  so 
flaunted  his  immoralities  that  he  had 
become  the  scapegoat  of  society.  He 
had  been  driven  forth  from  a  pure,  or  at 
least  respectable,  island,  to  dally  with 
sin  under  less  austere  skies.  The  house 
hold  virtues  shuddered  at  his  name. 
Izaak  Walton,  on  the  contrary,  had 
been  recognized  in  his  day  as  a  model  of 
domestic  sobriety.  He  had  lived  happily 
with  two  wives  (one  at  a  time),  and  had 
spent  much  of  his  life  "  in  the  families  of 
the  eminent  clergymen  of  England,  of 
whom  he  was  greatly  beloved."  He  was 
buried  in  Winchester  Cathedral,  where 
English  fishermen  erected  a  statue  to 
commemorate  his  pastime.  His  bust 
adorns  the  church  of  Saint  Mary,  Staf 
ford,  where  he  was  baptized.  His  second 
wife  sleeps  under  a  monument  in 
Worcester  Cathedral.  Dr.  Johnson  and 
Wordsworth  —  great  sponsors  of  moral 
ity  —  united  in  his  praise.  Mr.  Lang 
(an  enthusiastic  angler)  pronounced 
258 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

him  to  be  "a  kind,  humorous,  and  pious 
soul."  Charles  Lamb,  who  thought 
angling  a  cruel  sport,  wrote  to  Words 
worth,  "  Izaak  Walton  hallows  any  page 
in  which  his  reverend  name  appears." 

This  admirable  Crichton,  this  hon 
oured  guest  of  "eminent  clergymen," 
was  the  man  whom  Byron  —  who  had 
never  so  much  as  supped  with  a  curate 
—  selected  to  attack  in  his  most  scan 
dalously  indecent  poem.  His  lilting 
lines, 

"The  quaint,  old,  cruel  coxcomb  in  his  gullet 
Should  have  a  hook,  and  a  small  trout  to  pull  it," 

were  ribald  enough  in  all  conscience ;  but, 
by  way  of  superdefiance,  he  added  a 
perfectly  serious  note  in  which  he 
pointed  out  the  deliberate  character  of 
W'alton's  inhumanity.  The  famous  pas 
sage  in  "The  Compleat  Angler,"  which 
counsels  fishermen  to  use  the  impaled 
frog  as  though  they  loved  him,  —  "that 
is,  harm  him  as  little  as  you  may  possi 
bly,  that  he  may  live  the  longer,"  — 
259 


Points  of  Friction 

and  the  less  famous,  but  equally  ex 
plicit,  passages  which  deal  with  the 
tender  treatment  of  dace  and  snails, 
sickened  Byron's  soul,  especially  when 
topped  off  by  the  most  famous  passage 
of  all:  "God  never  did  make  a  more 
calm,  quiet,  innocent  recreation  than 
fishing."  The  picture  of  the  Almighty 
smiling  down  on  the  pangs  of  his  irra 
tional  creatures,  in  sportsmanlike  sym 
pathy  with  his  rational  creature  (who 
could  recite  poetry  and  quote  the  Scrip 
tures)  was  more  than  Byron  could  bear. 
He  was  keenly  aware  that  he  offered  no 
shining  example  to  the  world ;  but  he  had 
never  conceived  of  God  as  a  genial 
spectator  of  cruelty  or  of  vice. 

Therefore  this  open-eyed  sinner 
called  the  devout  and  decent  Walton  a 
sentimental  savage.  Therefore  he  wrote 
disrespectful  words  about  the  "cruel, 
cold,  and  stupid  sport  of  angling." 
Therefore  he  said,  "No  angler  can  be 
a  good  man";  which  comprehensive  re- 
260 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

mark  caused  the  public  to  ask  tartly  — 
and  not  unreasonably  — •  who  appointed 
Lord  Byron  to  be  its  monitor?  The  fan 
tastic  love  of  animals,  which  was  one  of 
the  poet's  most  engaging  traits,  may 
have  been  deepened  by  his  resentment 
against  men.  Nevertheless,  we  recognize 
it  as  a  genuine  and  generous  sentiment, 
ennobling  and  also  amusing,  as  most 
genuine  and  generous  sentiments  are 
apt  to  be.  The  eaglet  that  he  shot  on  the 
shore  of  Lepanto,  and  whose  life  he 
vainly  tried  to  save,  was  the  last  bird  to 
die  by  his  hand.  He  had  an  embarrass 
ing  habit  of  becoming  attached  to  wild 
animals  and  to  barnyard  fowls.  An  un 
grateful  civet-cat,  having  bitten  a  foot 
man,  escaped  from  bondage.  A  goose, 
bought  to  be  fattened  for  Michaelmas, 
never  achieved  its  destiny;  but  was 
raised  to  the  dignity  and  emoluments  of 
a  household  pet,  and  carried  about  in  a 
basket,  swung  securely  under  the  poet's 
travelling  carriage.  These  amiable  ec- 
261 


Points  of  Friction 

ccntricitics  won  neither  respect  nor 
esteem.  Byron  could  not  in  cold  blood 
have  hurt  anything  that  breathed ;  but 
there  was  a  general  impression  that  a 
man  who  was  living  with  another  man's 
wife  had  no  business  to  be  so  kind  to 
animals,  and  certainly  no  business  to 
censure  respectable  and  church-going 
citizens  who  were  cruel  to  them. 

Nevertheless,  the  battle  so  inaus- 
piciously  begun  has  been  waged  ever 
since,  and  has  found  more  impeccable 
champions.  It  was  possible  for  Charles 
Lamb  to  sigh  with  one  breath  over 
the  "intolerable  pangs"  inflicted  by 
"meek"  anglers,  and  to  rejoice  with 
the  next  over  the  page  hallowed  by  the 
angler's  reverend  name.  Happily  for 
himself  and  for  his  readers,  he  had  that 
kind  of  a  mind.  But  Huxley,  whose 
mind  was  singularly  inflexible  and  un 
accommodating,  refused  such  graceful 
concessions.  All  forms  of  cruelty  were 
hateful  to  him.  Of  one  distinguished  and 

26J 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

callous  vivisector  he  said  plainly  that  he 
would  like  to  send  him  to  the  treadmill. 
But  he  would  hear  no  word  against  vivi 
section  from  gentlemen  who  angled  with 
live  bait,  and  he  expressed  this  unsports 
manlike  view  in  his  "  Elementary  Les 
sons  in  Physiology."  Mr.  Arthur  Chris 
topher  Benson's  piteous  lines  on  a  lit 
tle  dace,  whose  hard  fate  it  is  to  furnish 
an  hour's  "innocent  recreation"  for  an 
angler,  had  not  then  been  written;  but 
Huxley  needed  no  such  incentive  to 
pity.  No  man  in  England  reverenced 
the  gospel  of  amusement  less  than  he 
did.  No  man  was  less  swayed  by  senti 
ment,  or  daunted  by  ridicule. 

When  Hazlitt  wrote,  "One  rich 
source  of  the  ludicrous  is  distress  with 
which  we  cannot  sympathize  from  its 
absurdity  or  insignificance,"  he  touched 
the  keynote  of  unconcern.  Insignificant 
distress  makes  merry  a  humane  world. 
"  La  malignite  naturelle  aux  hommes  est 
le  principe  de  la  comedie."  Distress 

263 


Points  of  Friction 

which  could  be  forced  to  appear  absurd 
made  merry  a  world  which  had  not  been 
taught  the  elements  of  humanity.  The 
elaborate  jests  which  enlivened  the 
Roman  games  were  designed  to  show 
that  terror  and  pain  might,  under  rightly 
conceived  circumstances,  be  infinitely 
amusing.  When  the  criminal  appointed 
to  play  the  part  of  Icarus  lost  his  wings 
at  the  critical  moment  which  precipi 
tated  him  into  a  cage  of  hungry  bears, 
the  audience  appreciated  the  humour  of 
the  situation.  It  was  a  good  practical 
joke,  and  the  possible  distaste  of  Icarus 
for  his  role  lent  pungency  to  the  cleverly 
contrived  performance.  "By  making 
suffering  ridiculous,"  said  Mr.  Pater, 
"you  enlist  against  the  sufferer  much 
real  and  all  would-be  manliness,  and  do 
much  to  stifle  any  false  sentiment  of 
compassion." 

Scott,  who  had  a  clear  perception  of 
emotions  he  did  not  share,  gives  us  in 
"Qucntin  Durward"  an  apt  illustration 
264 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

of  human  suffering  rendered  absurd  by 
its  circumstances,  and  made  serviceable 
by  the  pleasure  which  it  gives.  Louis  the 
Eleventh  and  Charles  of  Burgundy  are 
fairly  healed  of  rancorous  fear  and 
hatred  by  their  mutual  enjoyment  of  a 
man-hunt.  The  sight  of  the  mock  her 
ald,  doubling  and  turning  in  mad  terror 
with  the  great  boar-hounds  at  his  heels, 
so  delights  the  royal  spectators  that  the 
king,  reeling  with  laughter,  catches  hold 
of  the  duke's  ermine  mantle  for  support; 
the  duke  flings  his  arm  over  the  king's 
shoulder;  and  these  mortal  enemies  are 
converted,  through  sympathy  with  each 
other's  amusement,  into  something  akin 
to  friendship.  When  Charles,  wiping  his 
streaming  eyes,  says  poignantly,  "Ah, 
Louis,  Louis,  would  to  God  thou  wert  as 
faithful  a  monarch  as  thou  art  a  merry 
companion!"  we  recognize  the  touch 
of  nature  —  of  fallen  nature  —  which 
makes  the  whole  world  kin.  Ambroise 
Pare  tells  us  that  at  the  siege  of  Metz, 
265 


Points  of  Friction 

in  1552,  the  French  soldiers  fastened 
live  cats  to  their  pikes,  and  hung  them 
over  the  walls,  crying,  "  Miaut,  Miaut " ; 
while  the  Spanish  soldiers  shot  at  the 
animals  as  though  they  had  been  popin 
jays,  and  both  besiegers  and  besieged 
enjoyed  the  sport  in  a  spirit  of  frank 
derision. 

This  simple,  undisguised  barbarity 
lacks  one  element,  intensely  displeasing 
to  the  modern  mind,  —  the  element  of 
bad  taste.  Imperial  Rome  had  no  con 
ception  of  a  slave  or  a  criminal  as  a  be 
ing  whose  sensations  counted,  save  as 
they  affected  others,  save  as  they  af 
forded,  or  failed  to  afford,  a  pleasurable 
experience  to  Romans.  Human  rights 
were  as  remote  from  its  cognizance  as  an 
imal  rights  were  remote  from  the  cogni 
zance  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  survival 
of  savagery  in  man's  heart  is  terrifying 
rather  than  repellent;  it  humiliates  more 
than  it  affronts.  Whatever  is  natural  is 
likely  to  be  bad ;  but  it  is  also  likely  to 
266 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

come  within  the  scope,  if  not  of  our 
sympathy,  at  least  of  our  understanding. 
Where  there  is  no  introspection  there  is 
no  incongruity,  nothing  innately  and 
sickeningly  inhuman  and  ill-bred. 

The  most  unpleasant  record  which 
has  been  preserved  for  us  is  the  long 
Latin  poem  written  by  Robert  Grove, 
afterwards  Bishop  of  Chichester,  and 
printed  in  1685.  It  is  dedicated  to  the 
memory  of  William  Harvey,  and  de 
scribes  with  unshrinking  serenity  the 
vivisection  of  a  dog  to  demonstrate 
Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circulation  of 
the  blood.  Such  experiments,  made  be 
fore  the  day  of  anaesthetics,  involved 
the  prolonged  agony  of  the  animal  used 
for  experimentation.  Harvey  appears  to 
have  been  a  man  as  remote  from  pity  as 
from  ferocity.  He  desired  to  reach  and 
to  prove  a  supremely  valuable  scientific 
truth.  He  succeeded,  and  there  are  few 
who  question  his  methods.  But  that  a 
man  should  write  in  detail  —  and  in 
267 


Points  of  Friction 

verse  —  about  such  dreadful  work,  that 
he  should  dwell  composedly  upon  the 
dog's  excruciating  pain,  and  compli 
ment  the  poor  beast  on  the  useful  part 
he  plays,  goes  beyond  endurance.  Grove, 
who  had  that  pretty  taste  for  classicism 
so  prevalent  among  English  clerics,  calls 
on  Apollo  and  Minerva  to  lend  Harvey 
their  assistance,  and  promises  the  dog 
that  (if  Apollo  and  Minerva  play  their 
parts)  he  will  become  a  second  Lycisca, 
and  will  join  Procyon  and  Sirius  in  the 
heavens. 

Here  is  an  instance  in  which  a  rudi 
mentary  sense  of  propriety  would  have 
saved  a  gentleman  and  a  scholar  from 
insulting  the  principles  of  good  taste. 
It  is  more  agreeable  to  contemplate  the 
brutal  crowd  surrounding  a  baited  bear 
than  to  contemplate  this  clergyman 
writing  in  the  seclusion  of  his  library. 
Religion  and  scholarship  have  their  re 
sponsibilities.  The  German  soldiers  who 
ravaged  Belgium  outraged  the  senti- 
268 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

ments  of  humanity;  but  the  German 
professors  who  sat  at .  their  desks,  al 
ternately  defending  and  denying  these 
ravages,  outraged,  not  merely  human 
ity,  but  the  taste  and  intelligence  of  the 
world.  Theirs  was  the  unpardonable 
sin. 

Cruelty  is  as  old  as  life,  and  will  cease 
only  when  life  ceases.  It  has  passed  its 
candid  stage  long,  long  ago.  It  must 
now  be  condoned  for  its  utility,  or 
laughed  at  for  its  fun.  Our  comic  sense, 
if  less  full-blown  than  of  yore,  still  rel 
ishes  its  measure  of  brutality.  To  write 
gaily  about  the  infliction  of  pain  is  to 
win  for  it  forgiveness.  Douglas  Jerrold 
found  something  infinitely  amusing  in 
the  sensations  of  the  lobster  put  into  a 
pot  of  cold  water,  and  boiled.  His  de 
scription  of  the  perspiring  crustacean, 
unable  to  understand  the  cause  of 
its  rapidly  increasing  discomfort,  was 
thought  so  laughable  that  it  was  re 
printed,  as  a  happy  example  of  the 
269 


Points  of  Friction 

writer's  humour,  in  a  recently  pub 
lished  volume  on  Jerrold's  connection 
with  "Punch."  The  same  genial  spirit 
animated  an  American  Senator  who 
opposed  the  sentimental  exclusion  of 
egrets  from  commerce.  It  was  the 
opinion  of  this  gallant  gentleman  that 
the  Lord  created  white  herons  to  supply 
ornaments  "  for  the  hats  of  our  beautiful 
ladies";  and  having  expressed  his  sym 
pathy  with  the  designs  of  Providence, 
he  proposed  in  merry  mood  that  we 
should  establish  foundling  asylums  for 
the  nestlings  deprived  of  their  over- 
decorated  parents,  —  as  waggish  a  wit 
ticism  as  one  would  want  to  hear. 

When  an  eminently  respectable  Amer 
ican  newspaper  can  be  convulsively 
funny,  or  at  least  can  try  to  be  convul 
sively  funny,  over  the  sale  of  a  horse, 
twenty-seven  years  old,  blind,  rheu 
matic,  and  misshapen,  to  a  Chicago 
huckster  for  fifteen  cents,  we  have  no 
need  to  sigh  over  our  waning  sense  of 
270 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

humour.  The  happy  thought  of  calling 
the  horse  Algernon  gave  a  rich  twang  to 
this  comic  episode,  and  saved  the  cheer 
ful  reader  from  any  intrusive  sentiment 
of  pity.  When  a  pious  periodical, 
published  in  the  interests  of  a  Christian 
church,  can  tell  us  in  a  rollicking  Irish 
story  how  a  farmer,  speeding  through 
the  frozen  night,  empties  a  bag  of 
kittens  into  the  snow,  and  whips  up  his 
horse,  pretending  playfully  that  the 
"craitures"  are  overtaking  him,  we 
make  comfortably  sure  that  religion 
lends  itself  as  deftly  as  journalism  to  the 
light-hearted  drolleries  of  the  cruel. 

Novelists,  who  understand  how  easy 
a  thing  it  is  to  gratify  our  humorous 
susceptibilities,  venture  upon  doubtful 
jests.  Mr.  Tarkington  knows  very  well 
that  the  spectacle  of  a  boy  dismember 
ing  an  insect  calls  for  reprobation;  but 
that  if  the  boy's  experiments  can  be 
described  as  "infringing  upon  the  do 
main  of  Dr.  Carrell,"  they  make  a  bid 
271 


Points  of  Friction 

for  laughter.  "Penrod's  efforts  —  with 
the  aid  of  a  pin  —  to  effect  a  transference 
of  living  organism  were  unsuccessful; 
but  he  convinced  himself  forever  that  a 
spider  cannot  walk  with  a  beetle's  legs." 
It  is  funny  to  those  who  relish  the  fun. 
If  it  does  not,  as  Mr.  Pater  advises, 
make  suffering  ridiculous,  it  makes  sym 
pathy  ridiculous,  as  being  a  thing  more 
serious  than  the  occasion  warrants.  The 
reader  who  is  not  amused  tries  to  for 
get  the  incident,  and  hurries  cheerfully 
on. 

A  more  finished  example  of  callous 
gaiety,  and  one  which  has  been  more 
widely  appreciated,  may  be  found  in  a 
story  called  "Crocker's  Hole,"  by  Black- 
more.  It  tells  how  a  young  man  named 
Pike,  whom  "Providence"  had  created 
for  angling  (the  author  is  comfortably 
sure  on  this  point),  caught  an  old  and 
wary  trout  by  the  help  of  a  new  and 
seductive  bait.  The  over-wrought,  over- 
coloured  beauty  of  Blackmore's  style  is 
272 


\ 

Cruelty  and  Humour 

in  accord  with  his  highly  sophisticated 
sense  of  humour : 

1  The  lover  of  the  rose  knows  well  a 
gay,  voluptuous  beetle,  whose  pleasure 
it  is  to  lie  embedded  in  a  fount  of  beauty. 
Deep  among  the  incurving  petals  of  the 
blushing  fragrance  he  loses  himself  in 
his  joys  till  a  breezy  waft  reveals  him. 
And  when  the  sunlight  breaks  upon  his 
luscious  dissipation,  few  would  have  the 
heart  to  oust  such  a  gem  from  such  a 
setting.  All  his  back  is  emerald  sparkles; 
all  his  front,  red  Indian  gold,  and  here 
and  there  he  grows  white  spots  to  save 
the  eye  from  aching.  Pike  slipped  in  his 
finger,  fetched  him  out,  and  gave  him  a 
little  change  of  joys  by  putting  a  Lim 
erick  hook  through  his  thorax,  and 
bringing  it  out  between  his  elytra. 
Cetonia  aurata  liked  it  not,  but  pawed 
the  air  very  naturally,  fluttered  his 
wings,  and  trod  prettily  upon  the  water 
under  a  lively  vibration.  He  looked 
quite  as  happy,  and  considerably  more 
273 


Points  of  Friction 

active  than  when  he  had  been  cradled 
in  the  anthers  of  a  rose." 

The  story  is  an  angling  story,  and  it 
would  be  unreasonable  to  spoil  it  by 
sympathizing  with  the  bait.  But  there 
is  something  in  the  painting  of  the 
little  beetle's  beauty,  and  in  the  amused 
description  of  its  pain,  which  would 
sicken  a  donkey-beating  costermonger, 
if  he  were  cultivated  enough  to  know 
what  the  author  was  driving  at.  It  takes 
education  and  an  unswerving  reverence 
for  sport  to  save  us  from  the  coster- 
monger's  point  of  view. 

There  are  times  when  it  is  easier  to 
mock  than  to  pity;  there  are  occasions 
when  we  may  be  seduced  from  blame, 
even  if  we  are  not  won  all  the  way  to  ap 
proval.  Mrs.  Pennell  tells  us  in  her  very 
interesting  and  very  candid  life  of 
Whistler  that  the  artist  gratified  a 
grudge  against  his  Venetian  landlady  by 
angling  for  her  goldfish  (placed  tempt 
ingly  on  a  ledge  beneath  his  window- 
274 


Cruelty  and  Humour 

sill) ;  that  he  caught  them,  fried  them, 
and  dropped  them  dexterously  back 
into  their  bowl.  It  is  a  highly  illustrative 
anecdote,  and  we  are  more  amused  than 
we  have  any  business  to  be.  Mr.  Whist 
ler's  method  of  revenge  was  the  method 
of  the  Irish  tenants  who  hocked  their 
landlord's  cattle;  but  the  adroitness  of 
his  malice,  and  the  whimsical  picture 
it  presents,  disarms  sober  criticism.  A 
sympathetic  setting  for  such  an  episode 
would  have  been  a  comedy  played  in 
the  streets  of  Mantua,  under  the  gay 
rule  of  Francesco  Gonzaga,  and  before 
the  eyes  of  that  fair  Isabella  d'Este 
who  bore  tranquilly  the  misfortunes  of 
others. 

We  hear  so  much  about  the  sanitary 
qualities  of  laughter,  we  have  been 
taught  so  seriously  the  gospel  of  amuse 
ment,  that  any  writer,  preacher,  or 
lecturer,  whose  smile  is  broad  enough 
to  be  infectious,  finds  himself  a  prophet 
in  the  market-place.  Laughter,  we  are 
275 


Points  of  Friction 

told,  freshens  our  exhausted  spirits  and 
disposes  us  to  good -will,  —  which  is 
true.  It  is  also  true  that  laughter  quiets 
our  uneasy  scruples  and  disposes  us  to 
simple  savagery.  Whatever  we  laugh  at, 
we  condone,  and  the  echo  of  man's 
malicious  merriment  rings  pitilessly 
through  the  centuries.  Humour  which 
has  no  scorn,  wit  which  has  no  sting, 
jests  which  have  no  victim,  these  are  not 
the  pleasantries  which  have  provoked 
mirth,  or  fed  the  comic  sense  of  a  con 
ventionalized  rather  than  a  civilized 
world.  "Our  being,"  says  Montaigne, 
"is  cemented  with  sickly  qualities;  and 
whoever  should  divest  man  of  the  seeds 
of  those  qualities  would  destroy  the 
fundamental  conditions  of  life." 


THE  END 


Rtorrtfibe 

CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


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